DENVER — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea is fundraising off his claim that he’s being censored by Google, but his campaign declined to provide any evidence to support his assertion.
“You know Democrat Michael Bennet is in serious trouble when left-wing Big Tech companies like Google rush to his aid by pulling my ads,” O’Dea said in a social media post, which asked readers to donate to “FIGHT BACK against this calculated censorship.”
O’Dea’s claim that Google, one of the world’s most powerful tech companies, was censoring him echoes a frequent conservative talking point about bias from Big Tech.
O’Dea is the second prominent Republican candidate in Colorado to allege censorship without evidence.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl recently said Facebook is censoring her ads. Facebook noted Ganahl had failed to attach a required disclaimer to her ads and directed the campaign to a tech support troubleshooting page.
A review of O’Dea’s ad history on Google, which is publicly available, does not indicate a pattern of ads being removed, and the O’Dea campaign declined to provide evidence of its claim.
They pointed to a screenshot of an ad posting reading, “Removed for a policy violation.”
Such notices are common and can be a result of something as simple as a spelling error or formatting issue with the ad. Advertisers, including political campaigns, often resolve these so-called ad disapprovals by correcting the issue or appealing Google’s determination.
According to Google, O’Dea’s advertising accounts have had a small number of violations, mostly due to formatting issues.
A review of O’Dea's two Google ad accounts, which are publicly available to provide transparency on political ad spending, show a single ad was removed for a policy violation in June. The O’Dea campaign declined to share which policy violation was alleged by Google. That information is not publicly available. Additionally, the campaign would not say whether the issue was fixed or appealed to Google for review.
The O’Dea campaign provided 9NEWS with a statement from an unnamed “digital adviser to the O’Dea campaign.”
“These platforms play content police in an unfair way. They put out vague policies purposefully, then throttle and pull ads, while also being slow to respond. This happened to our campaign and voters have a right to know,” said the anonymous O’Dea campaign adviser.
Google offered to review any concerns the O’Dea campaign chooses to raise through its appeal process.
“All advertisers, including election advertisers, must adhere to our policies, which we enforce consistently and without bias,” said Google spokesperson Michael Acriman. “As always, if an advertiser believes a mistake was made, we encourage them to appeal the decision.”
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