Tag Archives: Civics

Google Play is helping to safeguard elections

At Google Play, our policies are designed to promote transparency for our users and help protect against misinformation. This work is critically important when it comes to safeguarding elections as people use apps to research candidates, register to vote, or find a polling place. As mobile apps disseminate voting information and increasingly support voting activity, we’re ensuring safety and transparency for app users. Recently, we’ve updated some policies to improve election safety and have committed additional resources to help safeguard elections.

Preventing deceptive behavior 

We don’t allow apps that enable people to distribute misleading information, such as altering media clips or sending fake text messages. While this policy applies broadly, addressing this content is particularly important as manipulated content increasingly appears in political discourse. To date, we’ve removed thousands of apps for engaging in deceptive behavior, generating manipulated content without the appropriate transparency measures or promoting demonstrably misleading claims. Read our deceptive behavior and manipulated media policies for more information. Additionally, our misleading claims policy prohibits demonstrably deceptive content that may interfere with voting processes, such as listing incorrect polling location information.    

Transparent government information

Whether people are looking for information on paying taxes or how to register to vote, they should have reliable and clearly-sourced information. In November 2019, we implemented changes that require any app that shares official government information to be clear about the source of that information and the app’s affiliation with the government. This information should be apparent from the app’s description. We also work with governments to verify their apps so people can be confident when reading and engaging with government information. Read this articlefor more information on communicating government information. Governments and any app communicating government information can visit this site for new information on keeping their apps secure.

Minimum requirements for news apps

To promote transparency in news publishing, we’ve recently introduced minimum requirements that apps must meet in order to be classified in the News category on Google Play. These include transparency requirements about the source and ownership of in-app news content, requirements applicable to news subscription services, and requirements regarding the use of affiliate marketing and ad revenue. These changes don’t make judgements about the content or the quality of the news itself. You can find more information about these requirements here.

Dedicated election support

We’ve also created dedicated teams across Google Play solely focused on elections to provide additional support and adapt to the changing landscape. This includes additional support for government agencies, specially trained app reviewers, and a safety team to address election threats and abuse. 

As part of Google’s work to prevent abuse on our platforms and help voters, Google Play and Android will continue to promote transparency for users, fight abuse on our platform, and equip developers with information and training resources to secure their apps. For more information about Google’s support for democratic processes around the world, please visit elections.google.

An update on our 2020 U.S. election efforts

As we approach the US election on November 3, we’re helping voters access authoritative information about the election, enhancing our efforts around election security and transparency, and connecting people to the democratic process. We wanted to provide an update on our work.

Helping voters access authoritative information

We just launched two features in Google Search with detailed information about how to register and how to vote. We know election deadlines and requirements vary by state, so no matter where you live, you can search for “how to register to vote”—and you’ll find information about voter registration in your state. That includes deadlines, registration options, and an easy way to check the status of your registration. 


When you search for “how to vote,” you’ll find details about how you can vote in your state—such as ID requirements, registration and voting deadlines, and guidance for different means of voting, like in person or mail. We work with non-partisan, third-party data partners, such as Democracy Works, which aggregates official data directly from state and county election administrators, and we link to your state government’s official website for more information.

HTV HTR MOCK - FIXED .jpg

Enhancing election security and transparency

As we’ve detailed, we’re making a very significant investment in election security. Our Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and our Trust and Safety teams work together to identify and prevent government-backed attacks against Google and our users. The Threat Analysis Group has flagged phishing attempts we’ve identified against campaigns and continues to share regular updates about actions we take against coordinated influence campaigns on our platforms. 

To stay ahead of threats, we meet regularly with government agencies responsible for election integrity and other technology companies to discuss trends. As we reiterated yesterday, this coordination is critical and will continue through the election. 

We’ve seen incredible engagement in our election security trainings with USC’s Annenberg School. In fact, the nonpartisan trainers have already trained over 3,000 campaigns and election officials on how to prevent digital attacks, phishing campaigns and hacking attempts—and they plan to complete sessions in all 50 states by September. 

Additionally, to help people involved in campaigns, we recently launched enhanced security for Google accounts to complement our Advanced Protection Program, offering additional safeguards for G Suite and Gmail users during the election season. People can easily self-nominate to receive additional security checks for active threats and suspicious activity, like hacking and phishing.


Last year, we introduced new policies for election ads and limited the ways political campaigns can target their ads—taking more steps to eliminate micro-targeting of voters. To build on these efforts, we recently expanded our policies - such as prohibiting ads that disseminate illegally obtained materials. We also enforce policies to prohibit content on our platforms that undermines trust in the democratic process, like calls to participate in voter fraud or false claims around the U.S. census or election results. We’re also updating our Political Ads Transparency Report to include more information about the election ads that run on our platform, new ways to sort campaign spending, and more frequent updates—giving people detailed insight into the political ads that run on Google and YouTube.

Connecting people to the democratic process

With both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions set to be virtual, we want to make sure you can still follow these historic events at home. You can watch next week’s Democratic National Convention live on YouTube, and you can tune in to the Republican National Convention on YouTube the following week. This continues our longstanding tradition of live-streaming major political events—including State of the Union addresses, debates and conventions. YouTube aims to keep you virtually connected to the political activities this election season, which you can read more about here. 

We’ll also be updating our2020 Elections experience on Google News, to include extensive coverage of major issues, live streams of major events, and reminders of registration and voting timelines.

As we approach November’s election, we will continue to ensure that all of our products are built -- and our policies are enforced—in a fair, objective, and nonpartisan way, without regard to political ideology. Our platforms have empowered people and organizations from across the political spectrum, giving them a voice and new ways to reach their audiences. We’ll continue to keep you updated on all of our work to support the 2020 U.S. election and other elections around the world.

Increasing transparency through advertiser identity verification

We’re committed to giving our users transparency, choice and control when it comes to the ads they see on our platforms. That’s why we’ve long offered tools like Ad Settings which allows people to control how ads are personalized or even opt out of personalized ads altogether, as well as features like Why this ad? which helps explain why a specific ad is being shown. Now, we’re working to bring additional transparency into the advertiser behind the ads people see.

In 2018, we announced a new identity verification policy for political advertisers. The policy requires all advertisers that want to run election ads on our platforms go through a verification program to confirm their identity. We display that identity in the ad unit so that users can learn more about the election ads they see on Google’s platforms. Since introducing this program, we’ve verified political advertisers in 30 countries. And now, to provide greater transparency and equip users with more information about who is advertising to them, we are extending identity verification to all advertisers on our platforms.

As part of this initiative, advertisers will be required to complete a verification program in order to buy ads on our network. Advertisers will need to submit personal identification, business incorporation documents or other information that proves who they are and the country in which they operate. Beginning this summer, users will start to see disclosures that list this information about the advertiser behind the ads they see.

Identity Verification.png

This change will make it easier for people to understand who the advertiser is behind the ads they see from Google and help them make more informed decisions when using our advertising controls. It will also help support the health of the digital advertising ecosystem by detecting bad actors and limiting their attempts to misrepresent themselves.

We will start by verifying advertisers in phases in the U.S. and continue to expand globally. Because we are working closely with our advertising partners to scale the program while continuing to ensure we are surfacing helpful information to our users, we expect that this process will take a few years to complete. Advertisers can learn more about the identity verification program here. 

At Google, our goal is to make more information about the ad experience universally available and accessible. Broadening our verification policy is the next step in reaching that goal. We’ll continue to look for additional ways to increase transparency in ads for our users. Stay tuned for more updates on our blog.

Source: Google Ads