Donald Trump clearly doesn’t watch CBS, because if he did, he’d be standing on a tarmac in front of a chopper, screaming about yesterday’s 60 Minutes report. For an interview with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, the program found that Google and YouTube collected the Trump campaign’s money for more than 300 video ads before removing them days later. The evidence can be found in Google’s public...
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan recently sat down with CBS This Morning’s Gayle King for a conversation about the future of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability company that wants “to accelerate progress.” More interesting than the very wealthy couple’s unusual attempt at philanthropy, however, was Zuckerberg’s response to a question about his secret White House dinner with...
Facebook has lost its only fact-checking partner in the Netherlands, Dutch digital newspaper NU.nl, over its policy of allowing politicians to openly lie in ads on the platform, according to an article on NPO 3.
NU.nl’s decision to bail comes amid widespread blowback over the Facebook policy. Critics, including some of its own employees , have argued it incentivises online disinformation...
Everything about digital political ads, from their truthfulness to even their design , has been a hot-button issue for the past few months. Facebook and Twitter have already weighed in with their stances, and now Google has also announced that it will restrict how political groups can target audiences starting early next year.
In a nutshell, Google’s decided that political advertisers can...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had an undisclosed meeting with Donald Trump at the White House in October, not long after Facebook quietly eased its policies to let politicians lie in ads and as intense pressure was building on the company to roll that change back, NBC News reported on Wednesday.
An NBC source said that ultra-conservative chairman of cyber-intelligence firm Palantir and...
Twitter on Friday revealed the final details of a plan to restrict political ads across its platform, saying it would prohibit political content in paid ads from candidates and political parties—while clarifying it would allow others that touch on politics, so long as they are “caused based.”
Twitter will no longer accept ads promoting any type of legislation, ballot measure, referendum, or...
American politicians aren’t the only ones Facebook’s given free rein to lie in political ads on its platform. Per a CNN report, the company’s extending its widely panned policy across the pond as well, right in time for the UK’s general election. And here I thought I’d have to wait a whole year to see the fallout of massive false advertising campaigns.
It’s been an absolutely bonkers month for social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, with Facebook admitting that it allows politicians to lie in ads on the platform and Twitter opening the floodgates to show users more ads than ever . Just yesterday, Twitter even announced that it was banning all political ads , something that Facebook has refused to do.
And it’s not just Facebook and...
Twitter on Wednesday announced a blanket ban on all political and issue-based advertising across its site, with CEO Jack Dorsey stating in a series of tweets that the company had decided to do so because “paying for reach” forces “highly optimized and targeted political messages on people.”
Dorsey added that political and issue ads present challenges including “machine learning-based...
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg denied that the company’s forays into political ads have anything to do with financial gain at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
Political ads have quickly become one of the most toxic parts of the Facebook advertising ecosystem, with the company and other major social media firms refusing to take down ads that...
If you watch this YouTube video of a “lifelong Democrat” who now supports President Donald Trump, you might get the impression that “AJ from Texas” wants to secure the...
Google has finally opened up about political ad-spending on its platforms and published a living archive of who’s paying what for your eyeballs while you’re just trying to consume some content. As we head into the heart of the midterm elections, Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign is outspending everyone.
Google’s advertising library is similar to archives that Facebook and Twitter...
Fake news. Foreign election interference. Dark money propaganda. This and more served as a catalyst for Facebook’s push for more transparency around political advertising on its platform. But its efforts to be more open are flawed, and the consequences are already becoming apparent.
On Wednesday, Facebook rejected a boosted post from nonprofit investigative journalism outlet Reveal, flagging...
It’s becoming clear that online companies can do some of the hard things they’ve fought against tooth and nail—they just have to be forced to do it, although they apparently won’t prepare ahead of time. Case in point: Google has paused the sale of political ads in Washington state while it gets itself in line with regulations that went into effect today. Better late than never?
Last night,...
Facebook already has more data on most people than it knows what to do with but the company announced Thursday that it will need a few more vital pieces of personal information from anyone hoping to place political ads on its platform, including a government-issued ID and social security number.
In a blog post, Facebook said it has officially rolled out its promised efforts to make political...
In response to increased scrutiny over Russia-bought ads that targeted Americans during the 2016 election, Twitter has announced new measures to increase transparency around ads purchased on its service.
The company says it will now disclose the total cost of all ad campaigns and share who purchased them. Information will also be made available to users about ads that specifically targeted...
In a letter last week, Sens. Mark Warner and Amy Klobuchar urged their colleagues to support a bill that would crack down on shadowy campaign ads running on social networks like Facebook. A draft of that bill may be circulated among lawmakers as early as Tuesday, Gizmodo has learned, but with at least one significant change.
The bill as originally proposed was intended to track...
Democrats in the House and Senate are pushing the Federal Election Commission to develop new rules governing political advertising on social media after Facebook revealed that Russian trolls routinely purchased ads on its platform during the 2016 election cycle.
“Foreign nationals were shown to have routinely deployed sophisticated tactics in making political expenditures to evade detection,...