Google will provide more information on targeted advertisements and give researchers more access to data on how its products work, to comply with landmark European Union online content rules, the Alphabet unit said yesterday.
Known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), the new rules are more onerous for Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Twitter, booking.com, Pinterest, Snap Inc’s Snapchat, Wikipedia, Zalando, and Alibaba’s AliExpress because of their large number of users.
The DSA takes effect on Friday and requires companies to do more to combat child sexual abuse content and disinformation, be more transparent about their algorithmic processes, bots, and targeted advertisements, and remove illegal, unsafe, or counterfeit products sold on their platforms, Reuters reported.
“We will be expanding the Ads Transparency Center, a global searchable repository of advertisers across all our platforms, to meet specific DSA provisions and providing additional information on targeting for ads served in the European Union,” Google’s vice president for trust and safety, Laurie Richardson, said in a blog post.
“We will increase data access for researchers looking to understand more about how Google Search, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Play, and Shopping work in practice, and conducting research related to understanding systemic content risks in the EU,” she said.
The US tech behemoth will also make its content moderation decisions more visible, offer users more ways to contact the company and update its reporting and appeals processes to provide specific types of information and context about its decisions.
It will launch a new Transparency Center where people can learn about its policies on a product-by-product basis.