
Big Tech Increases Effort to Curb Regulations on Political Ads
CIO Review APAC | Tuesday, December 06, 2022

As the proposed Political Advertising regulation is soon due to be voted on in two critical committees of the European Parliament, lobbying efforts are underway to narrow the text’s scope.
FREMONT, CA:The initiative is being led by Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), and the tech industry group DOT Europe have sent letters to EU legislators. According to the emails, there are concerns that the regulation's scope may be too broad to cover the communications and opinions of political parties and citizens. As a result, the emails ask that the text be changed.
As part of its Democracy Action Plan, the Commission put forth the regulation at the tail end of 2020. The rule was designed to be implemented before the upcoming European elections, which are scheduled for spring 2024, to increase political advertising transparency and combat misinformation in election campaigns.
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Both Google and DOT Europe, of which the tech corporation is a member, express concerns about the potential effects of the policy on political expression online in their emails to the legislator. According to a Google representative, the definitions of political and advertising under the plan are so broad that a vast quantity of content on web platforms will unjustly be caught.
Google claims that the Commission's initial definition of political advertising, which included paid-for user-generated content, was problematic because it could be interpreted to include any paid content that was thought to be even tangentially influencing an election.
This justification is repeated in the communication from DOT Europe, which requests that the definition of political advertising be narrowed to prevent collecting organic material in its purview. Google's email refers to a letter that 34 civil society organisations sent to the EU Council in October, in which they voiced their concerns about the regulation's effects on the right to free speech and demanded a clearer distinction between civic engagement and advertising content offered as a service.
Fernando Hortal Foronda, digital policy officer at the European Partnership for Democracy and one of the main writers of the letter, makes a distinction between the two positions, contending that while they are trying to limit the regulation's application to only remunerated services, Google is trying to limit it even more.
Big Tech appears to be pushing for the requirement that there be a distinct connection between political advertising and compensation. There is some support for limiting the scope of the regulation inside the Parliament. For instance, MEP Maria-Manuel Leito-Marques of the Social Democrats favours strengthening the law to cover services but falls short of tying it to compensation as Google and DOT Europe demand.
Inserting in the definition a clear link to the use of advertising service to ensure that private messages and thoughts on politics, which have nothing to do with advertising, do not fall within the scope during a parliamentary session. To defend freedom of expression and speech, conservative congressman Pablo Arias emphasised the significance of distinguishing between editorial and other content.
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