Google uncovers evidence of Russian adverts to sway US election

GOOGLE is investigating claims that Russian agents paid tens of thousands of dollars to advertise on its platforms in a bid to influence the US election.

The search giant is looking into reports that Russian actors spread misinformation ahead of the 2016 election through the promoted content services on Gmail and Youtube.

The adverts in question included material in favour of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the socialist Democrat candidate who lost to Hillary Clinton. There were also posts designed to stoke cultural tensions in the country, such as anti-immigrant material, according to the Washington Post.

Google said this is the first time it has uncovered evidence of its platform being abused for political influence. It said it will investigate how Russian operatives could have used its platform and how to prevent similar behaviour.

“We have a set of strict ads policies including limits on political ad targeting and prohibitions on targeting based on race and religion,” said a spokesman for Google.

“We are taking a deeper look to investigate attempts to abuse our systems, working with researchers and other companies, and will provide assistance to ongoing inquiries.”

Google is not the only technology giant to have reported Russian agents paying for adverts in the US as part of a campaign to influence the vote. Facebook has been working closely with US Congressional investigators after discovering 10 million people could have seen 3,000 controversial adverts bought by Kremlin-affiliated trolls. The social network said the Russian agency spent $100,000 (£76,000) promoting the “divisive” adverts in an attempt to influence the vote.

The Google findings are significant as the adverts appear to have been sold to a different agency to the one that advertised on Facebook. If that is the case, the controversy could spread wider than initially thought.

Google is investigating a set of adverts worth around $100,000, some of which could have been bought by legitimate Russian accounts.

The company was forced to backpedal after initially denying that its services had been involved in the controversy. It last month said it had “seen no evidence this type of ad campaign was run on our platform”.

It started investigating the matter following pressure from the US Congress, which is looking into allegations of widespread collusion.