Google pulls down political ads as US candidates keep pushing limits

Much of the recent scrutiny directed at online political advertising has focused on the Bloomberg campaign, whose ads have become ubiquitous. Its video ads have shown up atop YouTube’s homepage, part of over US$55mil (RM230.14mil) spent with Google. — AFP

Google has rejected dozens of ads from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for violating its ad policies in the week leading up to Super Tuesday, as well as a Bernie Sanders ad and two from a political action committee supporting Joe Biden, according to data released by the company on March 4.

A spokeswoman for Alphabet Inc’s Google declined to comment on its decision to remove any specific ads. It has removed the content from its database of political ads, so it’s impossible to know exactly what rules were broken. The company has a policy against making a "false claim” in a political ad, and said in November that it was banning "doctored and manipulated media", sometimes known as deep fakes, as well as misleading messages about the census and the "electoral or democratic process”.