Google bans political ads ahead of elections in the Philippines

The company said on Wednesday that it will stop ads running “during an election campaign period or a silence period” in the run-up to the vote. Google considers election ads as any paid posts that “either promote or oppose a political party or the candidacy of a person or party” running for public office.

The ban will run from February 8 up to election day on May 9, when President Rodrigo Duterte will run for election to the senate as he completes his six-year term. He is barred from seeking a second term under the constitution.The ability of Google, Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR) to precisely target and elicit reactions from users according to their political beliefs has been called a threat to democracy by business leaders, government officials and researchers.After US election day last November, Google temporarily barred advertisers from running ads related to the polls, extending the ban after the January 6 US Capitol riots until February this year.Maria Ressa, the CEO of Filipino news outlet Rappler and Nobel Peace Prize winner, warned recently that the platforms delivering news in the Philippines, a country where journalists have been targeted for criticizing the Duterte regime, “are biased against facts” and threaten the integrity of May’s election.

“There’s a lot at stake for the Philippines [in 2022] because if we don’t get fact-based, evidence-based reasoning, a shared reality, then we’re not going to come out of this. We’re going to splinter even further,” she…

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