Um, yeah. Political campaigns can buy ads from Google. I'm not sure why that would be surprising or objectionable unless you believe all political advertising is bad.

As a European I'm surprised. In my country, every form of political advertising, TV or online, is strictly regulated.

That doesn't say much. It's regulated in the US too, including digital.

What matters (and what is different) is what the specific regulations are.

I think many places it is simply illegal with political advertisement. They use facebook groups though since that is outside the country borders, but I dont see why that would be hard to make it illegal also.

In practice, Citizens United obviated any US regulations on political advertising. A rich patron can pour as much money as s/he desires into advertising on behalf of a campaign, and we don't have a right to know who that person is.

> In practice, Citizens United obviated any US regulations on political advertising. A rich patron can pour as much money as s/he desires into advertising on behalf of a campaign, and we don't have a right to know who that person is.

No, Citizens United didn't do that. That right always existed. If you're a billionaire, you always could purchase TV ads that feature (for example) you talking about how great Candidate Foo is, and why Candidate Foo will be the best thing since sliced bread. That is a fundamental right of free speech in our democracy - the government cannot restrict you from praising or criticizing a candidate. They can restrict you from coordinating with the candidate to make those statements, but they can't restrict you from your own independent speech.

The Citizens United decision ruled that people preserve this right when acting as a group. So instead of one single billionaire purchasing ad spots, a group of people could pool their money and purchase the ad time instead. Or they could launch a crowdfunding campaign. All of that is still perfectly legal as long as the person (or people) running the ads aren't coordinating their efforts with the candidate and the candidate's campaign.

> "Win the moments that win elections."

They aren't subtle about it. I also wouldn't mind as much if the tech industry were politically neutral - but its been shown time and time again that Silicon Valley, where a lot of this power is held, has a very obvious political bias.

Individual or company bias? Does Google discriminated between their customers? I can't recall any political groups complaining Google wouldn't take their money.

There are many complaints Facebook suppressed speech by political groups [1]. Twitter is known for suspending accounts for political speech they deem unacceptable. Google was recently observed ham-fistedly removing search results about guns from Shopping, which was discussed at length on HN and the hilariously incompetent way it was done was source of much entertainment. Google is also pushing out gun-related content from Youtube.

[1] https://www.dailywire.com/news/28313/study-heres-proof-faceb...