Google Accused of Helping to Monetize Misinformation About Southport Attacker

Google has been accused of helping to monetize a website that spread misinformation about the identity of the Southport attacker, which sparked the summer riots last year.

The Science, Innovation, and Technology Committee said they had seen an unpublished report that said Google's advertising network had helped monetize a site where misinformation about the attack appeared.

In the days following the murder of three girls in Southport last summer, violence erupted across England, fueled in part by false information circulating online about the attacker's identity and background. This included false claims that he was an asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK the previous year.

Committee chair Chi Onwurah MP said during an evidence session on misinformation that MPs had seen a report from digital advertising watchdog Check My Ads. The report said it had evidence that a website claimed "to be monetized" by two firms, including Google, "at the time that it published that misinformation."

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."

"I would completely agree that monetizing any form of low-quality information, particularly associated with an atrocious real-world attack, is absolutely not acceptable," she said.

"I haven't seen that report yet – very happy to take a look at the report once it comes out, and to respond in writing – but very much agree that would violate our policies.

"It's something that we would look into and understand what had gone wrong.

"These fast-moving, real-world situations are very challenging – there is viral spread of misinformation on social media, and we have to deal with the echo of that across sites that we operate with.