• Intelligence report: with the pandemic soaring disinformation and fake news

  • Strike against fake news, Twitter implements a ban on untrue news on vaccines

  • Google blocks political ads until President Biden takes office

  • The black market 'warms up', on the darkweb announcements of "vaccines" and fake certificates

  • Fake social profiles to lure minors, couple from Termini Imerese arrested

  • Ten US states denounce Google for advertising monopoly

  • "Gebru effect": two other researchers leave Google

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March 16, 2021 For the tenth consecutive year, Google publishes its 

Ads Safety Report

, an increasingly complex work to avoid the spread of malicious use of advertisements and advertisements on the search engine.



Compared to the first publication, many things have changed and the numbers have become gigantic: while

130 million

malicious ads

were blocked in 2011

, in 2020 over

3.1 billion

misleading advertisements

were intercepted and removed

and another 6.4 billion ads limited .    



The war on scammers in the midst of the pandemic

There was no shortage of bad guys looking for new ways to take advantage of people online.

Since last year, Mountain View has introduced a program to verify the identity of advertisers in more than 20 countries and to share their name and location (About this ad), one of the many innovations introduced to combat fakes, but it is the company itself to admit that, in 2020, its policies and their application have been severely tested due to the pandemic ..



Faced with the increase in the number of coronavirus cases worldwide since January, attention has focused sensitive events to prevent behaviors such as price increases on highly sought-after products - such as hand sanitizer, face masks - or announcements about false treatments and remedies.

In total, more than

99 million

Covid-related

ads

were blocked

during the year, including alleged miracle cures, shortages of N95 masks and, more recently, doses of fake vaccines.



Fraud, Politics, Elections and Online Hate

On the fraud and scam front, in 2020 the number of ad accounts disabled due to policy violations increased by 70%, from 1 million to over

1.7 million

.

Blocked or removed over 867 million ads trying to evade detection systems, including cloaking, and an additional 101 million ads for violating the deceptive representation policy.

In total, over

968 million

ads.  



Regarding

politics and elections

in various countries, restrictions have been applied on who can post ads and collections have been created on politicians from the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, India, Israel, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.

In the

United States

, since it became clear that the result of the presidential elections would not immediately take shape, a

pause in political announcements

was decided

from the closing of the polls and until the beginning of December: more than 5 million people suspended during the period. ads and blocked ads on over

3 billion

search

queries

that referred to elections, candidates or their outcome.



It was also a race to 'demonetize'

hate and violence content

in a year in which there was a significant increase in incitement and calls for violence online, with ad monetization blocking of approximately

168 million pages.

under the rules on dangerous and derogatory activities.