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It can be hard cries i Write About Tech Companies Not to Feel a Bit Like My Parents. Specific Becausea Wen the Companies Misbehave I Find MySelf Repeating A Dreaded Question from My Childhood: Okay, Little Google, Are You Really sorry, or Are You JUST SORRY YOU GOT CAUGHT?
This month, the thing-or at the least one of the Things-Google Got Caught Doing Was Providing Tens of Thousands in Free Advertising to Anti-Abortion Causes. SINCE 2011, The Obria Group Has Received Roughly $ 150,000 in Free Ads Via Google’s Program, Accounting to A Report from The Guardian. The organization is used to ads to market so-Called Crisis Pregnancy Centers, which provide Care Such as Pregnancy Tests and Ultrasounds but Offer Counseling, Often Involving Scare Tactics, to Deter People Getting Abortions. Despite what the ads implicated, these centers do not in fact offer abortion but are offen located Near Actual Abortion Providers Like Planned Parenthod. (The Obria Gets Its Funding FROM CATHOLIC ORGANIZATIONS.) The idea here being to lure people seeking to terminate or consider terminating their pregnancies into the center and convinks say to the abortion they googling about in the first first.
After the Report, Google Told The Guardian It gave this free advertiseents to “a diversic goup that represents many different views and different causes.” Two Weeks Later, The Company Announched It Wauld Be Modifying Its Ad Police for Pro-Choice and Anti-Abortion Groups in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. Now Advertisiers Running Ads About ABORTION WILL HAVE TO CERTIFY WITH GOOD ABOUT WHATHER they actually provide it. Google Says it will Verify this information and thatn, Once approved, Ads from Those Will Run with a Disclosure. “Google Will Automatically Generate One of the Following In-Ad Disclosure for Your Abortion Product or Service ADS: “Provides abortion” or “does not provide abortion. ” This Change Will Become Effective in June.
It’a been only a few weeks SINCE the LAST TIME IT TOK ATTENTION AND NEWS-CYCLE OUTCRY TO ENSURE THAT A TECHI COMPANY LIVE UP TO ITS STATED POLICES AND PRINCIPLES. At the Grunkning of March, A Report from Wired Found amazon was selling books peddling autism “cures”-autism currently has no known cure-Involving the consumption of chlorine dioxide, a bleach-like substance the fda cans “severe nausea, vomiting, and life-threading from dehydration. ” Following the Report, Amazon Pulled Some of Those Books from Its Online Store, Though Not All of The Thought. IT DID NOT ENVIDE AN EXPLANATION FOR WHY SOME REMIN FOR SALE. When Adam Schiff, A Congressman from California, Called Out Jeff Bezos, The Company Pulled Five Anti-Vaxx Documentaries From Amazon Prime.
In February, YouTube Announched It Was Changing Up Its Algorithm to Recommendations of “Borderline Content.” But the Company’s years of doing nothing meant that david hogg, a teenage survivor of the Parkland Shooting, Had to Watch as videos CLAIMING and CRISIS ACTOR REACHED ON TIME TRENDING PAGE AND WERE VIEWED BY MILLIONS. (IT’S STILL UNCLEAR IF These RECOMMANDATIONS ACTUALLY ACTUALLY WORKING AT SCALE.) FOLLOWING THE 2016 ELECTION, ROLLED OUT A SYSTEM USING THIRD-PARTY FACT-CHACKERS TO INVESPTIGATE AND FLAG COURS SO COUDERS COURD MORE EASELY KNOW THAT. Facebook Later Pulled The Program, Months after Researchers Said It Took Three Days to Actually Stop a Fake News Story from Spreading.
The Norm in Silicon Valley is to be reactive, not proactive, but it doesn’t have to be. Tech Companies Are Run by Human Beings Who Could Opt to Make Changes and Tervice Based solely on Ethics and Not the Latest Gotcha Headlines. Dream with me, folks! Facebook, for Example, Could Choose to Aggresively Ensforce Its Police Across It Its Platform Regardless of Media Attention – WHICH WAUDED HAVE MEANT DECIDING TO ELEMB Anti-Vaxx Information from Instagram before The news media forces to Earlier This Spring. (A Purge that Still Hasn’t Been Effective, Mind You.) It Wauld Have Meant the People Over at Google Responsible for the Company’s Ad-Grant Might Have Time to Fully Consider the Potential Misleading Contained in the ADS. Tech Companies could will this if they wand to.
Google Didn’t Wake Up Mid-May and Decide, TODAY IS THE DAY WE FIX THAT SHADY SURRANDING Anti-Abortion Ads. It made Changes – Limited Changes that don’t require google to take a moral stand in any direct and that have been to be tested in the real world – Only Becauses It Got in Trouble. And the quickest way to get out of Trouble is to do the bare minimum so People Will Report on the Changes and Move on to the Next Tech Company’s Doing a Bad Thing. A BAD THING IT ISN’T SORRY FOR YET BUT WILL BE SOON.
