
Today we reveal how YouTube blocked advertisers from building ad campaigns around social justice terms such as “Black Lives Matter.”
https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2021/04/09/google-blocks-advertisers-from-targeting-black-lives-matter-youtube-videos
2/ @leonyin and @asankin found that YouTube’s ad portal blocked search results for one-third of the 62 racial & social justice phrases tested.
For example: All the phrases we tested containing the word “Muslim” were blocked, even innocuous ones like Muslim fashion.
For example: All the phrases we tested containing the word “Muslim” were blocked, even innocuous ones like Muslim fashion.
3/ Google would not comment on its blocked racial and social justice terms. But after we reached out, Google EXPANDED the block list to include ADDITIONAL terms including:
icantbreathe
black excellence
civil rights
racial justice
say her name
icantbreathe
black excellence
civil rights
racial justice
say her name
4/ Google now blocks 84% of the phrases on our list of social and racial justice terms – up from one-third of those on our list when we first tested in November.
Google also changed its code to preclude future investigations.
Google also changed its code to preclude future investigations.
5/ As always, we show our work by providing detailed methodologies and access to our data.
https://github.com/the-markup/investigation-youtube-ad-placements https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2021/04/09/how-we-discovered-googles-social-justice-blocklist-for-youtube-ad-placements
https://github.com/the-markup/investigation-youtube-ad-placements https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2021/04/09/how-we-discovered-googles-social-justice-blocklist-for-youtube-ad-placements