Update (Noon ET): In an emailed statement, Google confirmed that it found $100,000 worth of questionable ads and said it’s working with researchers and ‘other companies’ on investigating abuse of its systems.
Et tu, Google?
For the first time since Sen. Mark Warner began questioning whether Silicon Valley tech giants have been ‘doing enough’ to root out and expose examples of alleged Russian interference in the November 2016 election, Google has reportedly discovered that Russia-linked operatives deceptively purchased tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of advertising on YouTube, as well as advertising associated with Google search, Gmail and the company’s DoubleClick ad network, according to the Washington Post. Google operates the largest advertising platform in the world, and YouTube is the world’s largest video-advertising platform.
According to WaPo, Google’s discovery is ‘significant’ because the advertisements in question do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated troll farm that bought ads on Facebook, which the paper says suggests that Kremlin disinformation efforts were much broader than lawmakers and Silicon Valley had believed.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Oct 9, 2017.
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