More than 300 video ads from the Trump campaign were taken down by Google and YouTube, mostly for violating their policies, according to a 60 Minutes investigation.
It’s unclear why the ads were taken down.
The outlet reviewed a searchable archive of political ads run on Google and YouTube and found that more than 300 Trump campaign ads were removed. The ads were not available to be screened and the archive did not detail whether they were removed due to a copyright violation, inaccurate content, or other issues.
“The archive does detail how many days the ad ran on the platform before it was taken down, approximately how much Google was paid and how many impressions it received,” 60 Minutes reported. “Typically, ads ran a few days before being yanked, suggesting they reached the target audience before removal.”
YouTube denies conservative bias:
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told the outlet that “there are ads of President Trump that were not approved to run on Google and YouTube.”
"As you know, conservatives think that you discriminate against them," host Lesley Stahl said.
"Well, first of all there are lots of very successful conservative creators on YouTube,” Wojcicki replied. “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."
Wojcicki says some false ads are okay:
“Facebook is facing a lot of controversy because it refuses to take down a President Trump ad about Biden which is not true. Would you run that ad?” Stahl asked.
“So that is an ad that right now would not be a violation of our policies,” Wojcicki replied.
“Is it on YouTube right now?” Stahl asked.
“It has been on YouTube,” Wojcicki said.
“Can a politician lie on YouTube?” Stahl pressed.
“For every single video, I think it's really important to look at it. Politicians are always accusing their opponents of lying. That said, it's not OK to have technically manipulated content that would be misleading,” Wojcicki answered. “For example, there was a video uploaded of Nancy Pelosi. It was slowed down just enough that it was unclear whether or not she was in her full capacity because she was speaking in a slower voice. The title of the video actually said drunk, had that in the title. And we removed that video.”
