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Comment by ShteiLoups | Hacker News Reader

Not that an outright ban is a good solution either, as there is a large discussion to have about what is and isn't political. Some people see some topics as inherently political, while others would say that they have nothing to do with politics.

So deciding what is and isn't banned becomes an inherently political statement.

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This makes the definition of "politics" meaningless. Besides, it's a lot easier to nail down an objective definition (at least for Google's purposes) of what falls under a specific subject (ads are sold on keywords) than it is to nail down an objective definition of "truth".

You can exclude ads that mention or are paid for by any PAC, candidate for public office, or are advocating for or against any particular public policy decision, or mention the topic of elections or voting.

This would eliminate the majority of them, leaving bad actors that don't care about Google's requirements anyways. Another option would be to simply make certain keywords unpurchaseable.

> nail down an objective definition of "truth"

Recognizing the truth or falsehood of a statement or series of statements can be complicated, but we're doomed as a species if an objective definition of truth stops us in our tracks.

When it comes to things in Google's wheelhouse, at least. Their entire advertising platform is based on categorizing ads and where they're supposed to display. This is an entirely different ball of wax than trying to determine if the text of an ad is true or false, and that's before we get into the "true but misleading in context" quagmire.

Besides, we have precedent here. Have a look at their policies surrounding what's allowed in health ads[1], they're pretty extensive, objective, and granular.

[1]: https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/176031?hl=en

Thanks, there is some thought-provoking stuff there.

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