Google and YouTube have removed more than 300 Trump campaign ads for violating the services’ policies, according to a 60 Minutes report. The CBS News program reviewed the companies’ transparency reports, which detail incidents in which ads have been taken down. However, the review found the records offered no explanations for why the videos were removed, and no details of the original content of the ads. The report asked: “Was it copyright violation? A lie or extreme inaccuracy? Faulty grammar? Bad punctuation? It’s unclear... We found very little transparency in the transparency report.” The archive does reveal how many days the ads ran for before being yanked, how much Google was paid, and how many impressions the videos received. The ads usually ran a few days, meaning they likely reached the target audience. However, YouTube has not removed a controversial campaign ad for Trump that pushes misleading claims about Joe Biden’s role in the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor.
