Google Removes Its Ads on Russian State-Owned Websites

US media is report­ing that Google has announced a cut-off of Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion sites from its vast ad dis­play net­work. Accord­ing to a report by CyberScoop:

Sep­tem­ber 1, 2022 Google says it took addi­tion­al steps in the past week so that brands would no longer see their ads on Russ­ian state-owned web­sites that are a reg­u­lar source of Ukraine war pro­pa­gan­da.  The move comes after a soft­ware devel­op­er tweet­ed screen­shots of ads from major West­ern com­pa­nies placed through Google’s dis­play adver­tise­ment ser­vice along­side head­lines spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion about the war. […] Google has long been under fire for how its adver­tis­ing prac­tices fuel Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da. A day after Russia’s Feb­ru­ary inva­sion of Ukraine, Warn­er sent the com­pa­ny a let­ter encour­ag­ing it to “at a min­i­mum” audit Google and Google sis­ter brand YouTube’s adver­tis­ing prac­tices, includ­ing its com­pli­ance with sanc­tions.  Warner’s let­ter to the CEO of Google par­ent com­pa­ny Alpha­bet assert­ed that Google plat­forms “con­tin­ue to be key vec­tors for malign actors — includ­ing, notably, those affil­i­at­ed with the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment — to not only spread dis­in­for­ma­tion, but to prof­it from it.”

Read the rest here.

In Feb­ru­ary, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report report­ed that Alpha­bet, Google’s par­ent com­pa­ny, barred Russia’s state-owned media out­let RT and oth­er chan­nels from receiv­ing mon­ey for ads on their web­sites, apps, and YouTube videos. We have also report­ed on the Glob­al Dis­in­for­ma­tion Index, which shows how Google and oth­er ad tech com­pa­nies and west­ern brands have unwit­ting­ly fund­ed anti-Ukrain­ian and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic disinformation.