Google pledges tighter curbs in hate video row
GOOGLE today set out plans for a “tougher” stance on extremist content and announced a hiring blitz of YouTube invigilators after being hit by a major advertising boycott.
More than 250 firms including HSBC, Toyota and Heinz have suspended spending on its video platform after seeing their ads appearing next to hateful videos by white nationalists, antiSemites, banned preachers and fundamentalists.
Google, which has historically entrenched itself as a neutral host of outside sources of online content, today announced that it will consider policing uploads as well as ads.
The online giant is “taking a hard look at our existing community guidelines to determine what content is allowed on the platform — not just what content can be monetised,” chief business officer Philipp Schindler (pictured) said. He added that Google’s action would include a new “tougher stance on hateful, offensive and derogatory content” on YouTube and Google’s huge network that plasters ads across the web.
It will now remove ads from content that is “attacking or harassing people based on their race, religion, gender or similar categories,” and is introducing new tools for advertisers to manage where their ads appear, as well as embarking on a recruitment drive “to increase our capacity to review questionable content for advertising”.
But as the world’s biggest advertisers descend on London for Advertising Week Europe, there was a muted response to Google’s new ad plans.
“Google’s stated intent and direction are very welcome — however, advertisers will want to see concrete evidence that their brands cannot appear against inappropriate content,” said Phil Smith, director general of ISBA, the advertising trade group with members stretching from Centrica to BT and Heineken.
Google’s ad boycott in the UK — which accounted for $ 7.8 billion (£6.3 billion), or almost 9%, of owner Alphabet’s sales last year — has been picked up by analysts worldwide. Brian Wieser, at New York’ s Pivotal Research Group, downgraded Alphabet stock. “Google faces a hostile industry of media owners in Europe,” he wrote. “We expect they will be all too happy to highlight future brand safety failings.”
One of the boycott’s biggest strikes was when Havas, the French media agency whose clients include the BBC, Royal Mail and O2, pulled all of its ad spending from Google and YouTube in the UK. It said Google had been “unable to provide specific reassurances … that their video or display content is classified [as acceptable] either quickly enough or with the correct filters”.
Google Europe boss Matt Brittin yesterday apologised for the debacle and said the tech giant “needs to do more”.
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