According to a statement issued by Google, the company will publicize the identity of any organizations who are paying for political adverts during the 2019 European Union Parliamentary Elections (which will, incidentally, not include the U.K. as a result of Brexit). Google state: “To support this democratic process, we’re rolling out products and programs to help people get the information they need to cast their votes.”
This means, according to The Verge, any advert that mentions a political party, candidate, or office holder will need to explicitly state who paid for the promotion. In addition, in order to ensure the information provided is genuine, Google are to introduce a new process to verify the stated identities.
In a further attempt to make the political advertising process clearer, Google will shortly issue its Election Ads Transparency Report which will summarize which organizations spent which sums of money in different locations. This report was used in 2017 for the U.S. midterm elections. With the 2019 version, Google states it will be issuing a: “EU-specific Election Ads Transparency Report and searchable ad library to provide more information about who is purchasing election ads, whom they’re targeted to, and how much money is being spent.”
As well as Google, Facebook is looking to tighten up the political advertising process. As noted by Business Insider, Facebook will label ads as they appear in its News Feed and also archive all political ads in a searchable library. The library will retain political adverts for seven years. Facebook will also apply these changes to Instagram.
The main point of contention that remains in relation to the new initiatives from Google and Facebook is how is a political advert defined? The definitions remain relatively narrow and centered around and party of candidate. However, this does not prevent prevailing topics connected with certain ideologies from being posted which can influence voting intention, such as an image of migration or climate change.
