Google Inc announced that as of yesterday its online advertising platform would not run campaign ads ahead of the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections, citing concerns about potential misinformation in the ads.
In a post on Google’s official Chinese-language blog for Taiwan on Wednesday, Google Taiwan senior manager for public and government affairs Anita Chen (陳幼臻) said her company was not running campaign ads from local political parties or presidential and legislative candidates from yesterday to Jan. 17.
To tackle the threat of online misinformation, Google has been working with local fact-checking groups with the aim of improving the media literacy of Taiwanese, Chen said.
However, these changes take time and cannot be achieved in the two months before the election, she said, adding that this was the primary factor in its decision to forgo campaign ads.
Google’s decision is in contrast with Facebook, which continues to defend running paid political ads ahead of elections worldwide.
On Tuesday, Facebook said that it provides ad transparency tools in Taiwan for ads focused on the upcoming elections.
Facebook public policy director Katie Harbath said in a blog post that anyone seeking to run ads about social issues, elections or politics in Taiwan must first confirm their identity and disclose who funded the ad, with a person, page or organization’s name appearing in a “paid for by” disclaimer.
Ads bought by authorized advertisers would be available in Facebook’s Ad Library for seven years with disclaimer information, and this would cover ads across all products on its platform.
The Ad Library provides users with details that include the spend range of the ad, its reach and the name of the person or entity that created it, Harbath said.
“We will continue to refine and improve our policies and tools as part of our commitment to help protect the integrity of elections in Taiwan and around the world,” Harbath said in the post.
Facebook launched transparency tools covering political and issue ads in the US in May last year, before extending them to the UK and India later that year and other countries earlier this year.
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