Google's ad platform reportedly allows anti-semitic campaigns to start – CNET


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Google’s ad platform reportedly allows anti-Semitic campaigns

BuzzFeed News says it started an ad campaign targeting phrases like “black people ruin everything” and then notified Google, which then took it down.

Google headquarters in Mountain View, California

BuzzFeed reportedly started ad campaigns targeting hateful phrases before they were pulled offline by Google.

Stephen Shankland/CNET

Facebook isn’t the only tech giant having trouble with anti-Semitic ad campaigns. According to BuzzFeed News, Google’s ad buying program allows ad purchases targeting racist terms, and even helps the purchaser find better search terms to buy against.

The news outlet reported that as part of a test, it purchased ads targeting a series of phrases such as “black people ruin everything” and “Zionists control the world.” ProPublica published a similar investigation on Thursday revealing that marketers could specifically target ads to reach anti-Semites on Facebook.

When creating the phrases, the outlet found that Google would offer suggestions to other search terms that a customer could potentially use to get better results. For instance, typing “Why do Jews ruin everything” as a potential phrase reportedly led to suggestions such as “the evil jew” and “jewish control of banks.” 

When purchasing the ads, BuzzFeed noted that Google would alert when a search term had “Low search volume” but otherwise allowed all but three phrases for the campaign when it went live.

This campaign was taken down by Google, but reportedly only after BuzzFeed sent Google a screenshot of the campaign.

“This violates our policies against derogatory speech and we have removed it,” a Google spokesperson reportedly told the outlet after receiving notice of the test.

Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s senior vice president of ads, said in a statement that his team’s goal is to stop the keyword suggestions from making offensive suggestions, and that their system does have language that should have alerted an advertiser that was attempting to use the terms in BuzzFeed’s test.

“In this instance, ads didn’t run against the vast majority of these keywords, but we didn’t catch all these offensive suggestions. That’s not good enough and we’re not making excuses,” Ramaswamy said. “We’ve already turned off these suggestions, and any ads that made it through, and will work harder to stop this from happening again.”

Google is among many companies that have pledged efforts toward ending ads running against hateful search terms. Phillip Schinder, Google’s chief business officer, vowed in March that the search giant would take a “tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content.”

On Wednesday, Facebook banned monetization on a list of content that includes “violent content” and “prohibited activity.”

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