Starting this Wednesday (1st), Google will prohibit the placement of election ads on its platforms. The decision, communicated last week, reflects the pressure of the new regulations of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) for the 2024 Elections, in particular an excerpt from the resolution on electoral advertisements that provides for the service of promoting “political-electoral” content, whose conceptualization is considered broad by analysts consulted by People’s Gazette.
The new rule of big tech This applies to all ads managed on Google Ads, which include ads on the search engine and YouTube, as well as applications and websites on the Display network, which are those on which the company serves its ads. According to digital media analysis company Comscore, Google’s Display network reaches 90% of internet users worldwide.
When announcing the suppression of political-electoral ads, Google stated that elections are important and that, over the past few years, it has worked to “launch new products and services to support candidates and voters”. The company also said that it “has a global commitment to supporting the integrity of elections” and that it will continue dialogue with “authorities regarding this matter”.
Google did not justify what led the company to cancel election ads. However, the network’s decision to make political advertisements unfeasible ends up making clear its inadequacy with the TSE’s new requirements.
A note on the company’s support website says that as of May, advertisements for “political-electoral content” will be prohibited and cites part of TSE resolution No. 23,732/2024 that defines what falls under this type of content: “Ads elections, political parties, federations and coalitions, elected positions, government proposals, bills, exercise of the right to vote and other political rights or matters related to the electoral process”.
This designation appears in article 27-A of the resolution, which, in addition to describing what “political-electoral” contents are, provides for a series of obligations for big techs that provide services to promote this type of content, such as maintaining a repository of ad data and providing an “easy to use” tool that allows searching for keywords and advertiser names, in addition to reporting amounts spent, people reached by the ad and profiling.
These requirements were approved at the end of February, but only came into force now, 60 days after publication. They are also permanently enforced, including in non-election years and pre- and post-election periods.
Both Google and Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp) maintain “ad libraries”, through which it is possible to carry out searches restricted to electoral advertising and by keywords. There are small differences between both platforms, as Google has the search option under “Political advertising” and Meta offers the topic “Social issues, elections or politics”. As of this Wednesday, however, Google will no longer update this specific election advertising tab, although previous results will still be available for consultation.
In other parts of the resolution on electoral propaganda (article 28), the TSE determines that the promotion of content on social networks “can only be used to promote or benefit a candidacy, political party or federation that hires it, with the use of promotion being prohibited. for negative propaganda.”
In the case of search engines, the TSE also prohibited the “paid prioritization” of content that promotes negative propaganda and that disseminates “false data, fraudulent news or facts that are notoriously untrue or seriously out of context”. Anyone who violates these provisions may be investigated for abuse of power.
The decision to veto election ads was made solely by Google. Others big techs They have not commented on the new TSE rules, nor have they made announcements about the promotion of political-electoral content so far.
Broad definition for “political-electoral content”
For the analysts heard by the People’s Gazettethe problem of resolution, with regard to advertisements on social networks, lies in the broad conceptualization of “political-electoral content”.
Lawyer and legal consultant on freedom of expression and digital André Marsiglia assesses that article 27 of the new resolution is not clear regarding what electoral propaganda is and, when it characterizes among the political-electoral contents “government proposals, bills, exercise of the right to vote and other political rights or matters related to the electoral process”, can lead to confusion, for example, with editorial, newspaper and magazine content that may be promoted.
“The last paragraph [do artigo 27] leaves the advertising environment and enters the editorial environment. It starts to dialogue very closely with informative content, with journalistic content, interviews, parliamentary speeches, and all of this can fall within this framework that is the electoral advertising rules”, he states.
For lawyer Antonio Carlos de Freitas Jr., master in Constitutional Law from USP and specialist in Electoral Law, when the text of the resolution deals with candidacies or elective positions, there is some type of concreteness, but when it refers to government programs and projects By law, any type of political demonstration can be covered.
“Every political issue, every possible Brazilian political idea is subject to the rules of this article,” he said. “I cannot place a speech that is political outside of the list so extensive, so extensive, so analytical that was placed by the Superior Electoral Court”, he said.
Analysts also cite as an example that any government advertising could be framed within this concept, although they consider that some guideline could be established by the TSE.
In Marsiglia’s opinion, instead of consolidating understandings in order to harmonize practices for the electoral period, the TSE’s new resolution ended up implementing controversial points imprecisely, which, according to him, could lead to numerous problems during the election – being Google’s decision just one of them.
He recalls, for example, article 9 of the same resolution on electoral propaganda, which provides that platforms are responsible for deciding, on their own, to immediately suspend content and accounts that convey messages with “anti-democratic acts”, with “facts notoriously untrue or seriously out of context that affect the integrity of the electoral process”, “hateful behavior or speech”, among others.
Marsiglia claims that the resolution does not make it clear what disinformation is and that the Electoral Court’s decisions do not provide networks and platforms with information to make decisions in this regard.
“The platforms do not have sufficient jurisprudential material in terms of pacifying the points of what is or is not disinformation”, explains the lawyer. “Article 9-E, by placing content moderation under the responsibility of the networks, makes them, as a precaution, remove any content that may be or that they perceive to be interpreted as ‘disinformation’, which will lead to suspension of numerous publications. This is the seed of censorship”, he concludes.
In 2022, Bolsonaro and Lula’s candidacies invested more than R$50 million in Google ads
Although 2024 is the year of municipal elections, the campaign expenses of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), in 2022 give an idea of the impact of Google’s decision. The two candidacies, combined, spent R$51 million on advertising on the platform during that year.
According to Google’s ad library, Bolsonaro’s campaign spent R$28,658,500 on 1,067 ads in that period. In the case of the former president, it is noteworthy that most of the ads were removed “due to a policy violation” – Google, however, does not inform which policies were violated or why these ads were removed, nor when they have been removed.
Lula, in turn, made 2,659 advertisements on the platform at a cost of R$22,789,000 in that campaign.
First-time candidates may be more disadvantaged
Although other social networks, such as Facebook, continue to provide election advertising services, ads on YouTube and Google’s search engine are important tools for marketing strategies, so a negative impact is expected, especially on novice candidates, without many party resources, and that have their campaigns based on the digital environment – compared to traditional campaigns, with saints and visits to communities and events, for example.
“The lack of momentum favors candidacies that I will call classic or traditional. I don’t think it’s a specific harm to the economic capacity of the applications. I think it has an influence on the digital versus traditional strategy, or social media versus classical”, he comments.
Networks participated in public hearings on draft resolutions
In response to questions from the People’s Gazettethe TSE stated that the resolution’s measures were discussed with political parties, individuals and institutions during public hearings held on January 23, 24 and 25 of this year.
According to the Court’s website, some of the topics relating to resolution 23,732 were debated on January 25, such as rules on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in elections, content promotion, use of personal data and the regulation of lives electoral campaigns, as well as responsibility for publishing fabricated, manipulated or disinformative materials.
At the time, Google’s representative, Tais Cristina Tesser, requested that, in relation to the use of Artificial Intelligence in advertisements, responsibility for information and content be assigned to the advertisers themselves. The company also requested adjustments to reinforce that the advertising shutdown was equally up to advertisers, including the responsibility of not promoting content with misinformation.
Meta, represented by Rodrigo Ruf Martins, presented four proposals. Among them, the platform requested that the TSE precedent be mentioned as a basis for the judicial decision determining the removal of repetitive or identical content, in cases of electoral propaganda that conveys disinformation. The company also proposed that it be mandatory to indicate a URL to remove this type of content, as well as notification that it was a court order, among other proposals.
Google and Meta did not comment on whether or not the TSE had accepted their suggestions in the resolution. Reading the final document shows that, among the various suggestions made by the networks, those mentioned above are not included.
