Editorial Guidelines. Like all AdWords ads, political ads must follow our editorial and content policies (including our trademark policies). Google may refuse any ads or terminate ad campaigns at any time, for any reason, as noted in the advertising Terms and Conditions.
I believe that this is a good idea and I agree with the principle of it, but I can't say that I agree with the implementation.
ReplyDeleteI think that points 1, 2, 4, and 5 are fine, but I don't agree with point 3. It's too much of a gray area and opens the door for bias towards some candidates/actions.
For example, take the recent occurrence with Rudy Giuliani and his use of tax payer dollars to meet with and protect his mistress. Would talking about this be personal (because it involves his actions outside of acting as an elected official), or would not be personal (because it involves tax payers dollars).
The problem is that you can't create a blanket rule that always includes/excludes things, because once there's a rule, people will simply find a loophole to include/exclude cases like those mentioned above.
Basically, I agree with the principle, but it opens the door to a lot of biased censorship and I believe opening that door is worse than the current system.
I have to say that I totally think it is in your right not to allow some things to appear on your websites. It's not like you are taking something off someone else's server. You are just not linking to ad. It's not even like you are not crawling their site. It's only the ad.
ReplyDeleteYou are completely in your rights. However, searchers and consumers are the ones who decide whether such an action means that they don't trust you anymore, taking their search business elsewhere.
I don't think that anyone will care or notice that you are filtering ads. I am almost glad you are exercising your right to do what you feel is right.
Thanks!
WHAT is meant by PERSONAL LIFE????
ReplyDeleteWe are talking about the next leader of the free world.
Someone who will replace Supreme Court justices that will be there for DECADES!
Someone who has the power to get us involved in another long and expensive war where thousands may die
You have no private life, and people are free to express whatever they feel is valid about you.
It is not whether their private lives are attacked - it is about whether the statements are valid and what effects their personal habits and tendencies could have on their decision making biases.
Google has no right to stand in the way of free expression
Cracking up at the Commissioner Gordon references ... since (a) crime rates are almost assuredly up under his tenure and (b) he had an affair.
ReplyDeleteVery clever! Although I'm not 100% sure that Gotham City Police Commissioner is an elected position.
))nerd alert((
I believe that you're not following your own rules regarding political ads on Google.
ReplyDeleteI just saw a website [www.humanevents.com] advertized on google that seems to offer personal attacks on Barack Obama.
Please do the right thing and remove political ads like this. Thank you.
-Michael
In view of what just happened with the Prop 8 ads, it's time for Google to revise this policy, and, in general, the methods by which webmasters can control what kind of content they receive. We have counted on Google to provide us with context-appropriate ads. For many websites, political and religious messages are never appropriate. We should be able to generically block certain categories of advertising.
ReplyDelete