Google and YouTube removed 300+ ads promoting President Trump over the summer, a CBS report stated on Sunday.
CBS’ “60 Minutes” combed through a searchable archive of ads that had appeared on the two sites and found 300 video ads had been removed for “violating company policy,” with no explanation as to what policies were broken.
When asked whether YouTube discriminates against conservatives, CEO Susan Wojcicki disagreed.
“First of all there are lots of very successful conservative creators on YouTube,” she said. “Our systems, our algorithms, they don’t have any concept of understanding what’s a Democrat, what’s a Republican. They don’t have any concept of political bias built into them in any way. And we do hear this criticism from all sides.”
“We also have people who come from more liberal backgrounds who complain about discrimination. And so I think that no matter who you are, we are trying to enforce our policies in a consistent way for everybody,” she continued.
Many of the ads reportedly ran on the platforms for a few days before they were removed, suggesting they were seen.
Google and YouTube have fallen under scrutiny about political advertisements on social media and their ability to quickly spread fall information with little regulation.
Twitter announced in October that it would be banning all political advertising on its platform, but Google and YouTube did not, instead clarifying its advertising policy, including diminishing the ability for advertisers to micro-target users.
• Bailey Vogt can be reached at bvogt@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.