Subscribe to the Blunt Force Truth podcast

Google Is Fighting for Criminal Justice Reform. Here’s Where It’s Going Astray.

This week, Google hosted an event at its Washington headquarters to announce a new corporate policy: Bail bond services will no longer be allowed to post ads on the company’s ubiquitous search platform.

Starting in July, Google will begin to phase out ads for bail bond services. Google’s head of global product policy, David Graff, expressed his hope that they would disappear entirely within a few months, stressing that Google had no interest in earning revenue through the sale of ads it deemed predatory.

As a private company, such value judgments are entirely within Google’s purview, and the company has taken such actions before. It has previously barred advertisements for pay day loan companies and other controversial financial services, including some cryptocurrencies, on the basis that they are structurally unfair, misleading, or predatory.

Graff explained that, after barring pay day loan ads, Google received support from other companies who considered following suit. Already in this case, Facebook has announced that it, too, will ban bondsmen’s ads.

Removing advertisements was just one of several possible creative policy options. For example, Google might have simply made an official policy of monitoring bondsmen’s ads for particularly misleading or unfair practices while redirecting ad revenue from those ads to a bail fund, such as the regional Bronx Freedom Fund or women-focused Essie Justice Group. […]

 

Read full story here


Want more BFT? Leave us a voicemail on our page or follow us on Twitter @BFT_Podcast and Facebook @BluntForceTruthPodcast. We want to hear from you! There’s no better place to get the #BluntForceTruth.


Want more BFT? Leave us a voicemail on our page or follow us on Twitter @BFT_Podcast and Facebook @BluntForceTruthPodcast. We want to hear from you! There’s no better place to get the #BluntForceTruth.