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This Week's Updates:
New TTP Report: How Google Helps Fake Abortion Clinics Target Low-Income Women: On Tuesday, CfA’s Tech Transparency Project (TTP) released a new report revealing how Google has helped crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) disproportionately serve search ads to low-income women. CPCs have a history of targeting this demographic, and of engaging in misleading practices to mimic actual abortion clinics. After creating Google test accounts in three different US cities, TTP assigned them to a range of income brackets in Google’s ad personalization settings. When these test accounts searched terms like “abortion clinic near me,” the low-income users generally received a higher volume of advertisements for CPCs – in one city, 56% of the ads show to a low-income user were for CPCs, while a high-income user received only 7%.
CfA Executive Director Michelle Kuppersmith said, “Google’s situation with anti-abortion clinic ads is a mess. Some of these “clinics” are using Google search ads in a way that clearly violates Google’s policies against misrepresentation; in other cases, Google itself is failing to label these ads properly. While lower-income women may be the primary targets for fake clinics, the fact is that anyone who uses Google search for abortion information may be subject to deception.”
TTP’s report was covered by The Guardian, which reached out to Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin and Senator Mark Warner for comment.
Congresswoman Slotkin said, “We sent a second letter in November because Google was still failing to consistently apply disclaimers to misleading ads. Despite our action – and assurance from Google that they would only show verified abortion providers when a woman was seeking the procedure – these findings from TTP [Tech Transparency Project] prove there’s clearly more work that needs to be done.”
Senator Warner said, “Ads from ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ that reference ‘Free Abortion Help’ or ‘Abortion Consultation’ are obviously not in compliance with Google ads policies that forbid ads ‘that deceive users by excluding relevant product information or providing misleading information’. I urge Google to take action to prevent these deceptive advertising practices meant to trick users, especially low-income women.”
Biden’s State of the Union Takes Aim at Corporate Exploitation, Big Tech: On Tuesday night, President Biden used his State of the Union address to call out “capitalism without competition,” planting a flag for antitrust actions in a range of sectors, from publishing and home improvement to digital ads and defense contracting. The President also criticized social media companies for “the experiment they are running on our children,” leaving young people to navigate platforms designed to maximize engagement without serious regard for user safety.
Regulations Help Isolate Crypto Meltdowns: Cryptocurrencies and crypto exchanges have been rocked by instability, leaving investors bankrupt and scaring off the celebrities who were once eager to promote decentralized finance. Rather than infecting the US economy, however, the crypto crash has remained relatively isolated. Strong banking regulations protected the US financial system from wider fallout, while loopholes created by weakened FDIC deposit rules under the Trump administration helped banks like Silvergate take on risky crypto deposits. These outcomes underscore the importance of independent regulators – if the crypto industry had gotten its way, the economic consequences of the crash could have been much more severe.
