The Wall Street Journal: Google said to be rethinking how it handles political ads

This post was originally published on this site

Google is in discussions about changing its political ad policy, according to people familiar with the matter, about a week after Facebook Inc. FB, -1.43%   and Twitter Inc. TWTR, -0.91%   publicly diverged on how to handle those ads amid the spread of misinformation.

Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL, -0.03% GOOG, -0.02%   Google has been holding internal meetings about changing its political ad policy and is expected to share more information with employees this week, the people said, though it is unclear what the changes will be.

Some Google employees are speculating the changes could be related to what type of audience targeting the company allows ad buyers to place. It’s unclear when Google would implement any new policy.

All of Google’s advertising policies are uniform across search and YouTube, and any ad policy change would be reflected across all of its platforms, a Google spokesperson said.

Google has historically accepted political ads, and last month ran a controversial ad by the Trump campaign that included an unsubstantiated claim about former Vice President Joe Biden’s role in the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

Also popular on WSJ.com:

SoftBank founder calls his judgment ‘really bad’ after $4.7 billion WeWork hit.

If Warren scraps private health care, beware the unintended consequences.