According to a NewsGuard study, classified ads from dozens of government and nonprofit organizations appear on disinformation sites as programmatic advertising from Google.
In a report for the European Commission, analysts found 108 programmatic classified ads from 57 government and nonprofit organizations that gave the impression that 50 Internet sites discovered through NewsGuard spread misinformation. Some were placed next to articles with false or misleading content, others were published elsewhere. on sites, adding on the home page.
In most cases, the organizations involved had no idea that their classified ads were placed on disdata sites. In one example, a Planned Parenthood ad appeared next to an article selling false information about unsafe abortion; in another, an ad for the City of New Haven’s vaccination program gave the impression that an article falsely claimed that COVID-19 vaccines contain poisonous spike proteins.
The ads from Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian liberal arts school in Michigan, gave the impression that five sites were spreading incorrect information: one about an article published through RestoredRepublic. co that claimed former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton “died at 9:05 p. m. 31. 2018′ at the US base at Guantanamo Bay.
Hillsdale College executive director of media relations and communications Emily Stack Davis said the school was not aware of the announcements.
“We will be on this factor internally and with our advertising partners to better reflect the audience the school is looking to reach,” he said.
Other affected organizations, in addition to Doctors Without Borders and Franklin University, said they would move Internet sites to their lists of banned sites. Ads were discovered in nine countries: USA, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Austria and the Netherlands. and New Zealand on platforms such as Google and The Trade Desk, delivering hyper-targeted virtual classified ads to online reader algorithms and auction processes.
More than 70% of classified and nonprofit ads known through NewsGuard (81 out of 108) were served through Google.
Many U. S. fitness organizations, schools, and universities have a view to the U. S. The U. S. seems to have been affected. Meanwhile, several nonprofit teams responding to the humanitarian crisis caused by the Russian-Ukrainian war, in addition to those helping refugees, are helping fund sites containing Russian disinformation, adding to the claim that reports about Russian atrocities are hoaxes.
According to an August 2021 report via Comscore and NewsGuard, disinformation sites make $2600 million from big brands through programmatic advertising.
Google says it analyzed some of the examples cited in the report and got rid of classified ads from pages where it discovered content that violated its terms, adding content that made destructive fitness claims.
“In recent years, we have developed extensive measures to prevent classified ads from appearing alongside incorrect information on our platform, adding policies that cover up false claims about elections, climate replacement denial, and similar accusations of the Covid-19 pandemic and other health issues. similar problems,” a spokesman said.
“We have also expanded our policies to deal with destructive war-like content in Ukraine. We monitor all sites in our publisher network and when we find content that violates our policies, we promptly remove classified ads from the program. “