Renan Honorato
April 24, 2024 – 6:31 p.m.
Based on the TSE’s new legal parameters, Google assessed that it would be unfeasible to moderate more than five thousand municipalities during the election period this year (Credit: Disclosure)
Following decisions by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Google prohibited political campaigns from being promoted by the advertising tool.
Thus, both the search engine and its video portal YouTube will no longer be able to publish materials related to the policy. The platform’s new policies come into effect from the 1st. May and are valid for elections in all national political spheres.
In fact, Google issued a statement about this: “Elections are important to Google, and over the past few years we have worked tirelessly to launch new products and services to support candidates and voters. For this year’s Brazilian elections, we will update our Google Ads political content policy to no longer allow political ads to run in the country. This update will take place in May, with a view to the entry into force of electoral resolutions for 2024. We are globally committed to supporting the integrity of elections and will continue to engage with authorities regarding this matter.”
Google’s new criteria
Until now, on the Google Ads policy platform, it was necessary for organizations and people to have verification in order to promote electoral content involving parties, candidates or office holders.
Therefore, with the change, verification will no longer be necessary and the Google transparency report will no longer exist.
Revenue from advertising campaigns, according to the transparency report, was over R$130 million with the placement of almost 60 thousand advertisements. In comparison, Alphabet, the parent company of Google products, recorded net profit of US$20 billion in the last quarter of 2023 alone.
In fact, Google will discriminate between political and electoral content and material that is related to government projects and campaigns, such as campaigns against dengue.
Thus, the company begins to distinguish political promises from government programs, for example. The company has been complying with legislation on political campaigns since 2021 and, based on an internal assessment, decided to eliminate this source of revenue.
Google wants transparency in political ads
What is the context of Google’s decision?
Since 2019, the Electoral Court has defined a series of laws that define what political-electoral content is and how this disclosure could be made.
In February, the TSE required that digital platforms that have ad boosting services needed to meet a set of requirements.
Among these requirements was the maintenance of a database with all campaign materials. Furthermore, the platform should be easily accessible by any citizen.
Thus, due to the complexity, big tech decided to end the modality after understanding that such a process would be complex and expensive.
Therefore, based on these new legal parameters, Google assessed that it would be unfeasible to moderate more than five thousand municipalities during the election period this year.
On the Google website it is possible to consult all the countries that can or cannot promote political campaigns on the platform.
