Ireland: Anti-abortion campaign calls Google to be “Socially irresponsible”. Google is “socially irresponsible” according to one of the biggest anti-abortion campaigns in Ireland. The accusation is made after Google decided to ban all referendum-related advertising ahead of a vote this Friday on whether to legalise abortion.
The referendum will ask about repealing the 8th amendment of the constitution which gives unborn children the same right to life as the mother and makes abortion illegal.
John McGuirk, communications director of the Save the 8th, says that the problem is that the world’s most powerful company says ‘We think there is a threat to the integrity of the electoral process in a Western democratic state,’ and then refuses to specify what that threat is.
Since the start of calls for referendum, there has been widespread concern about foreign interference in online method of campaigning, especially on the anti-abortion side. The Irish government said there’s little they can do to police the origin of online advertising.
Before Google’s decision to ban online referendum adverts, Facebook also announced to take measures to crack down on foreign interference in the campaign by banning advertisements from anyone outside of Ireland.
None of the companies has released data that shows there was a significant surge in advertising from non-Irish groups, although the Irish edition of the Times & BuzzFeed News have uncovered several examples.
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“To use language that BuzzFeed readers use, that is not a ‘socially responsible corporate citizen’,” McGuirk stated adding that that’s a socially irresponsible corporate citizen making a very serious claim and presumably has data to back it up, and they would not share it with the authorities or the govt or the media or anyone else in the democracy.
McGuirk believed the real reason Facebook & Google had taken these measures was because they do not want to be held accountable if the public doesn’t vote to legalise abortion on Friday.
Brexit advocate Nigel Farage has directly credited Facebook for its role in the Leave campaign’s victory in the UK’s EU referendum back in 2016.
McGuirk thinks that they banned it because Together for Yes were not spending online and they did not have the resources to spend online and they were concerned that they were being outspent.
On the other hand, Together for Yes expressed concerns of not being able to match the No side’s online advertising budget, they later raised more than 500,000 euros through a crowd funding campaign, some of which they had planned to spend online.
According to the data collected from the Transparent Referendum Initiative using the Who Targets Me tool, a large amount of paid-for advertising from the Yes side, and from No campaigns is shown.
Nonetheless, Together for Yes leveled the playing field by welcoming both Facebook and Google’s ad bans.
McGuirk thinks that there was a reason for this response as Together for Yes were throwing a party the next day.
He added “It’s because they viewed it, just as everyone watching this campaign viewed it, that this was much worse for us than it was for them.”
