Joe O’Dea Claims Big Tech is Censoring His Campaign without Evidence
“O’Dea’s claim that Google, one of the world’s most powerful tech companies, was censoring him echoes a frequent conservative talking point about bias from Big Tech.”
GOP Senate candidate Joe O’Dea is taking a page out of Trump’s playbook for a last ditch effort to save his flailing campaign. O’Dea is claiming that Google is censoring his campaign and aiding Senator Bennet without providing any evidence. According to Kyle Clark from 9News, “If Big Tech companies were censoring Republican candidates in Colorado, that would be a huge deal. If Republican candidates are making that up, just totally inventing it for political gain, well then that would be a huge deal too right?”
9News Denver: O’Dea claims Google censorship, refuses to provide evidence
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea is fundraising off his claim that he’s being censored by Google, but his campaign declined to provide any evidence to support his assertion.
“You know Democrat Michael Bennet is in serious trouble when left-wing Big Tech companies like Google rush to his aid by pulling my ads,” O’Dea said in a social media post, which asked readers to donate to “FIGHT BACK against this calculated censorship.”
O’Dea’s claim that Google, one of the world’s most powerful tech companies, was censoring him echoes a frequent conservative talking point about bias from Big Tech.
O’Dea is the second prominent Republican candidate in Colorado to allege censorship without evidence.
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A review of O’Dea’s ad history on Google, which is publicly available, does not indicate a pattern of ads being removed, and the O’Dea campaign declined to provide evidence of its claim.
They pointed to a screenshot of an ad posting reading, “Removed for a policy violation.”
Such notices are common and can be a result of something as simple as a spelling error or formatting issue with the ad. Advertisers, including political campaigns, often resolve these so-called ad disapprovals by correcting the issue or appealing Google’s determination.
According to Google, O’Dea’s advertising accounts have had a small number of violations, mostly due to formatting issues.
A review of O’Dea's two Google ad accounts, which are publicly available to provide transparency on political ad spending, show a single ad was removed for a policy violation in June. The O’Dea campaign declined to share which policy violation was alleged by Google. That information is not publicly available. Additionally, the campaign would not say whether the issue was fixed or appealed to Google for review.
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