Watch: This 10-Second Ad Got a Pro-Life Group Censored by Google
Getting yourself banned by a major tech company is a surprisingly easy thing to do if you’re a conservative. You don’t even need to be a fringe figure or organization to manage this feat. Just ask the folks at Americas PAC.
Americas PAC has “broadcast more than 150,000 ads supporting free market candidates and Republican principles with a specific focus on urban markets,” according to their website.
“On issues like school choice, lower taxes, stopping out of control government spending, economic opportunity to succeed, traditional marriage, life, health care and national security, Americas PAC ads have reached the 38% of minority voters who identify themselves as conservative and provided significant increases in Minority votes for Republican candidates in those races we participated,” the website continues.
On one of those issues — life — the PAC went after two Democratic senators who voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. The bill would have required doctors and health care professionals to give care to babies who are delivered alive during a termination procedure as if they had been delivered regularly and prescribed severe penalties for those who didn’t.
Democrats killed the bill in the Senate; the stated reason behind their refusal to vote for it was that the legislation was superfluous, although one imagines the party’s renewed focus on spiking anything that could even remotely be seen as infringing upon the sacred, inviolable right of late-term abortion might have had something to do with it.
America’s PAC decided to go after two of the Democratic senators who voted against the bill: Michigan’s Gary Peters and Minnesota’s Tina Smith. This was the 10-second advertisement that they ran against Smith:
As political advertisements go, this is pretty anodyne. It states a simple, reductionist case which can be supported by the larger facts and does so in an inoffensive manner. There is literally nothing here that you wouldn’t see during a late-October commercial break on “Jeopardy!” in an election year.
Yet somehow, running that ad on Google got America’s PAC banned from the largest American ad platform.
“Google suspended the campaign and Americas PAC’s account on April 5th,” the group announced on its website.
“Americas PAC appealed and submitted verification information that it is an FEC Registered Political Action Committee and has been engaged in Federal Elections as an Independent Expenditure Committee since 2014.”
When they appealed, they were allegedly told in an email by Google that they had “confirmed that your account is in violation of Google Ads policies. Since this decision is final, your account will not be reinstated.”
They were also told not to create any new accounts, as those would be banned, as well.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect was the Orwellian-lite explanation for why this had all occurred: “Our support team will not be able to give you any more specifics on the suspension,” Google wrote. That’s helpful.
“My assumption is that we violated their policy that liberals should never be criticized,” Tom Donelson, chairman of Americas PAC, said. “Or maybe we violated their policy against effective conservative advertising. It is hard to know because they won’t give us a reason.”
“The only plausible conclusion is that Google banned Americas PAC for its conservative character, rather than the content of the ads,” he added.
“If the content of the ads is acceptable to FCC regulated radio stations, and Americas PAC is a registered Federal Election Commission Independent Expenditure Committee with a five-year track record of raising and spending millions of dollars reported to the FEC, then the only feasible explanation for Google’s actions is an ingrained corporate bias to protect Democrats.”
“At least when Marc Elias and his minions come after us, they cite their point of view and we hash it out with radio station managers,” Donelson said, referencing his battles with DNC law firm Perkins Coie over their radio ads.
“Perkins Coie has never been successful in shutting us down. Google arbitrarily erected a digital wall between us and voters who use its platforms.”
This isn’t the first time that Google has gone after pro-life organizations, either, as Newsbusters pointed out.
“In 2008, the company took down ads from The Christian Institute, saying that ‘Google policy does not permit the advertisements of websites that contain ‘abortion and religion-related content.’’ Later, it began to remove what it called ‘deceptive’ pregnancy center ads, at the urging of NARAL Pro-Choice America,” they noted.
There’s no deception here, no mixing of ‘abortion and religion-related content.’ In fact, we don’t even know what prompted this, which is the most ominous part of this whole controversy. It’s time that internet users began demanding accountability from a giant that seems to have its thumb on the political scale.
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