EU Commissioner discussing fake ads with Google
Google needs to be more transparent about how it is fighting the spread of “fake news,” European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said in a statement after a video conference with Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
“I called for introducing tools to enable more transparent and responsible advertising and for working with the wider ecosystem. I told Mr Pichai that, if done right, such tools could contribute to reducing monetisation of disinformation,” Ms Jourova said.
Disinformation via the internet is a worldwide concerns and governments and regulators are trying to get to grips with it, especially with reference to elections, political advertising and the covid pandemic.
Ms Jourova has earlier criticised tech giants for making money out of the spread of fake news. She recently launched a European Democracy Action Plan to fight disinformation and to promote media freedom and free elections.
“I was pleased to hear that Google limits its targeting for political advertisement, but our legislation will aim broader, to cover also so-called ‘issue-based ads’.” she said.
Ms Jourova also addressed the European Union´s updated copyright directive and said Google should ensure a fairer distribution of revenues from news articles to European publishers. Google recently announced agreements with French publishers about paying for using editorial content in search results. The company has also signed deals deals with several European media groups about access to limited number of news stories for a new service called Google News Showcase.
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