Voting rights advocates say Google declined to remove ads with “active and blatant disinformation” about voting by mail; Facebook removed similar ads last week
The story lands two months after Google showed it would act on ad abuse when the harm was commercial — it removed search ads tied to sites that charged users large fees for voter registration or harvested their data. Here the alleged harm is political rather than financial, and Google is holding back where Facebook moved first, pulling similar voting-by-mail ads the week before.
That asymmetry echoes Google's earlier political-ad posture: its 2019 decision to limit microtargeting of political ads frustrated both parties precisely because Google treats political advertising as a category to manage by broad rules, not case-by-case takedowns — which is effectively what advocates are now demanding.
First-order effects
Voting rights groups now have a direct platform-to-platform comparison: identical disinformation claims about voting by mail that Facebook removed remain runnable as paid ads on Google.
Second-order effects
Campaigns and advertisers get an arbitrage route — messaging barred from one platform can still be bought on the other — putting pressure on Facebook's removal decision and on Google's review thresholds ahead of the election.
Third-order effects
If enforcement stays divergent, both platforms drift toward blunt, blanket measures instead of judgment calls — a pattern the corpus confirms when Facebook and Google later extend pre-election political-ad bans as fraud claims persist, and when a 2022 researcher test finds YouTube approving zero of twenty blatantly false voting ads while TikTok approved most of them.
The trend: Platform moderation of political ads is consolidating around crude, platform-wide rules because case-by-case enforcement keeps producing visible inconsistencies between rivals.
Google took five days to come to a conclusion to leave up misinformation about voting, which violates its own policies. It sets a troubling precedent about post-election misinformation as well. With other smarties, spoke to @isaacstanbecker for his story. https://www.washingtonpo…
So Google is censoring @prioritiesUSA campaigns that focus on Trump's hateful, racist record but they are OK with ads that share “blatant disinformation” about vote-by-mail. Absolutely shameful. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
We the people must let Google know that they are a danger to our free and fair election. Allowing misinformation on voting by mail to remain on their platform undermines our democracy. A boycott of their advertisers could be in order. Shameful Google. https://www.washingtonpost.c…
not a surprise. #google & #facebook generally pitch in with a couple sheets of single-ply toilet paper to address a mountain of shit & pat themselves on the back for doing “content moderation.” would they consider scraping a swastika off a jewish tombstone “moderating” the harm? …
It takes serious effort to look more apathetic over voting-disinformation campaigns than Facebook. Read the room, Google. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Google Ad moderator: Should I take down this clearly misleading ad designed to suppress voter turnout? Google Ad manager: Don't. Be Evil. https://twitter.com/...
Google Ad moderator: Should I take down this clearly misleadng ad designed to suppress voter turnout? Googke Ad manager: Don't. Be Evil. https://twitter.com/...