Committee chair Chi Onwurah MP, during an evidence session on misinformation, said MPs had seen a report from digital advertising watchdog Check My Ads, which said it had evidence that a website claimed “to be monetised” by two firms, including Google, “at the time that it published that misinformation”.
Elsewhere in the session, Ms Storey said she believed that had the Online Safety Act been in effect last summer when the riots took place, it would have “made a difference” to how easily misinformation was able to spread.
MPs on the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee said they had seen an unpublished report which said the tech giant’s advertising network had helped monetise a site where misinformation about the attack appeared.
In response, Google’s managing director for trust and safety in Europe, Amanda Storey, said that if true, such an incident would violate the tech giant’s rules and it would investigate “what had gone wrong”.
Ms Storey added that she believed Google’s position as a search engine, rather than a social media platform, meant it was in a different position with regards to social media platforms when it came to misinformation.
