In its latest collection of data based on money spent for political campaigns, the tech giant failed to include several of Australia’s major independent politicians, creating many questions in regards to the upcoming federal elections.
Google’s transparency report is a collection of stats based on how much money political candidates and parties are spending on their ads and other forms of campaigns (videos, photos, text, etc.) online. According to the company’s rules and regulations, all parties are to be included in this report in order to create a level playing field for everyone and to avoid any unfair advantages (such as one party or candidate being promoted more than another via online services.)
Considering how strict Google appears to be on this matter, the fact that they neglected to collect data from ads created by several Australian independent political candidates raises a number of questions. A spokesperson for the company pointed out that this was an error from their behalf that has since been corrected (the data has indeed appeared on the transparency report for the left-out candidates,) but with the federal elections only a few months away, this failure will create an air of confusion in regards to Google’s data collecting capabilities.
Among those who weren’t included in the initial version of the transparency report were independent candidates Ryan, Scamps, Ackery and Hughes challenger Georgia Steele.
