USA – Google earned $10m from ads misdirecting abortion seekers to ‘pregnancy crisis centers’

Study finds the search giant has profited since Roe was overturned from anti-abortion groups buying misleading search terms

Kari Paul
Thu 15 Jun 2023

Google has made millions of dollars in the last two years from advertisements misdirecting users who were seeking abortion services to “pregnancy crisis centers” that do not actually provide care, according to a new study.

The tech giant has taken in an estimated $10m in two years from anti-choice organizations that pay to advertise such centers alongside legitimate results on the Google search page, according to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit group that conducts misinformation research. Its study, published on Thursday, estimates that the search results have reached and potentially misled hundreds of thousands of users.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/15/google-misleading-abortion-ads-pregnancy-crisis-centers


YouTube’s Search Results for “Abortion” Show Exactly What Anti-Abortion Activists Want Women to See

YouTube’s Search Results for “Abortion” Show Exactly What Anti-Abortion Activists Want Women to See
Gory videos rife with misinformation.

By April Glaser
Dec 21, 2018

When you Google “abortion,” the top results are relatively staid considering the divisiveness of the topic in American life. There’s a link to information about the procedure from Planned Parenthood, a Google map of nearby abortion providers, a link to an overview of anti-abortion and pro-choice arguments from the nonpartisan procon.org, and links to various news sources like the New York Times and the New Yorker.

If, until recently, you did the same over on Google-owned YouTube, it felt like you were searching in a whole other universe. Before I raised the issue with YouTube late last week, the top search results for “abortion” on the site were almost all anti-abortion—and frequently misleading.

Continued: https://slate.com/technology/2018/12/youtube-search-abortion-results-pro-life.html