Google is planning to make the information of advertisers who will pay for political ads in the upcoming lower-house (Lok Sabha) elections in India freely available to the public.
The company did the same with recent the U.S. Mid-term elections, where it took the initiative of publicly making information about who is spending on political advertisements. Also keeping a close eye on people who are paying for political adverts.
Sunita Mohanty, Google India’s Director of Trust and Safety, said to Indian Express that the company is also establishing tools to fight misinformation and fake news, which often gets active in any elections.
For the U.S. Midterms, Google published a transparency report that is updated on a regular basis. Any political ad that cost more than $500 to the owner was listed. Meanwhile, the company put out many norms to procure a free and fair election.
“In the US, during the mid-term elections, we ran weekly reports showing all the advertisements that ran on the Google’s platform, who paid for them, which party did it cover. We plan that for India,” Sunita said to Indian Express.
Earlier this year, Facebook and Twitter, both introduced new tools on their respective platforms that reveal information about advertisers to the masses. This was mainly due to their role being played in the meddling of 2016 Presidential Elections.
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