Trump Campaign: Google’s New Ads Policy is a ‘Removal of Free Speech’

Google’s new political advertising policy was a surprising move that has Trump’s campaign saying it violates freedom of speech and is direct retaliation for President Trump’s victory.

What Google has done is to significantly limit a marketing tactic called microtargeted social media ads that are commonly used by most political campaigns, especially Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. These political ads are directed at very specific groups of people online, and Trump’s campaign did a tremendous job with this tactic. His campaign manager, Brad Parscale, believes the change in Google’s policy is payback for President Trump’s victory.

“It is a removal of free speech. It is a voter suppression activity,” Parscale said in an interview with Fox News. “2016 freaked them out because I used a whole bunch of liberal platforms to do it. I guarantee you, this decision came from another room full of people going, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got to stop them. They’re going to win again in a landslide, and we can’t be part of it.’”

Google, which happens to own YouTube, has plans to begin its new regulations in January which will only allow political advertisers to target voters using age, gender and zip code. They will no longer be able to direct specific ads aimed at users based on their political affiliations or public voter record — even if those users have given permission for the campaign to contact them.

According to Parscale, “It would almost be like [if] AT&T had all the lists of all the Trump supporters in America, and AT&T said, ‘Oh, you can’t dial their phones,’ I mean, it’s crazy.”

Many Democrats also dislike Google’s new policy because they believe it will end up hurting Democrats more than Republicans. In fact, 95 Democratic digital operatives and strategists signed a post on Medium arguing that if Google takes away their ability to focus ad dollars on unregistered voters, “Democratic organizations and campaigns are at a severe disadvantage.”

Google, however, said the need for the change in policy is due to a desire to improve voters’ confidence in political ads on its platforms.

“We want the ads we serve to be transparent and widely available so that many voices can debate issues openly,” the company said.

Parscale was asked which party is affected most by Google’s new policy, he said: “I think it hurts America. These are new tech ways of stopping connections. If I went on TV right now and said, ‘The telephone companies aren’t allowing me to call people,’ all heck would break loose. Right? It’s exactly what they did. They just did it with a different connection.”

Google indicated that it is aware that political operatives of both parties are upset, but said this in a statement: “We believe the balance we have struck — allowing political ads to remain on our platforms while limiting narrow targeting that can reduce the visibility of ads and trust in electoral processes — is the right one.”


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9 responses to “Trump Campaign: Google’s New Ads Policy is a ‘Removal of Free Speech’”

  1. “We want the ads we serve to be transparent and widely available so that many voices can debate issues openly,”
    Unfortunately, only one side, seems to want to debate.
    While the other wants to limit free speech and anything, that they disagree with.
    I’ve also seen, how transparency works, with google.
    Tell me more about your algorithms and how you ban free thought and expression, with their use.

    • Project Veritas (PV) has proven has pervasive and pernicious the algorithms targeting conservatives are. And everyone can prove it just by searching the conservative orgs and people, like President Trump searches turn up all the leftist MSM fake news purveyors.

  2. This is wrong and I believe they should be fined for the lack of freedom of speech, opinion, and surpressing it’s user of fair use.
    It seems that while everyone is now dependant upon the social media they seem to be becoming more like the doctors like Hitler and China. “We will allow you only what we want you to see”.
    It is time to fine them billions of $ for surpressing the constitutional rights of this country’s freedom of speech and and advertising rights. Or we just just ban their company’s use in this country and have one developed for our own country. With all rights and freedom used. Freedom of speech, religion and liberty’s. With the exception of no slander of race, religion or sexual preference. Which would supress some freedom of speech.

  3. The new policy, though potentially damaging Democrat advertising, will only hinder Republicans–if applied unevenly. Who thinks that Google will keep their not inconsiderable weight off the scale? Not me.

  4. Google’s new policy it is the removal of free speech. This is a loss of user confidence in Google. This refusal to openly discuss issues and vote for or against them. This new Google policy is doing very serious damage to freedom-loving America!

  5. Google’s restrictions seem to encourage honesty – forcing all politicians to say the same thing to broad swaths of the public, rather than telling each focus group what they want to hear. For example, Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” comment was intended for a narrow constituency, but when it “leaked” to the general population, it hurt her.

    If anything, I would like to see the ability to target by age or sex taken away completely; and the ability to target by zip code restricted to only allow selecting the entire geographical area that the candidate is elected by – no more, no less (president = all of USA; senators = all of state; etc).

    Politicians should be forced to say the same thing, e.g. to female millennials as to make seniors – everyone should hear the promises being made.

  6. Our response MUST BE to deny ANY use of anything Google. Shut them down. Trump needs to tear them apart for their violation of free speech on their platforms, which they had set up as PUBLIC FORUMS — they need to be closed down. ANY Public Forum MUST NOT BE CENSORED.

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