Politico: Fresh Confrontation for Google (Morning Tech)

June 3, 2020 Media

The Freedom from Facebook & Google coalition is launching another online ad campaign today — again directed at employees, investors and analysts — demanding to break up Google and calling for the search giant to address its role in “spreading racism and hate,” “profiting from misleading ads,” and “collecting your private health data.” (MT covered related efforts around Facebook’s annual meeting last week.)

“Like we have seen with Facebook this week, asking Facebook or asking Google to fix their own problems is an exercise in futility,” said coalition co-chair and American Economic Liberties Project executive director Sarah Miller, who is focused on pushing policymakers to take on the market power and business models of these leading tech platforms. She told MT that while she doesn’t expect the ads launching today to change Google’s behavior, the coalition’s goal is to draw attention to how Google may profit off content that spreads hate. “The type of content that engages users is often hateful, it’s violent, it’s fake, it’s conspiratorial … and it is core to their ability to generate profits for their corporate executives and shareholders.” (Now topping the charts of internet misinformation, as MT reported Tuesday, is misleading content about protests.)