Twitter on Wednesday said it would ban all advertisements about political candidates, elections and hot-button policy issues such as abortion and immigration, a significant shift that comes in response to growing concerns that politicians are seizing on the vast reach of social media to deceive voters ahead of the 2020 election.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the policy in a series of tweets, saying paying for political speech has the effect of “forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people.” The policy will take effect in late November.
We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…
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“While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions,” Dorsey said.
The policy covers ads targeting office-seekers and elections including those around ballot measures, as well as those that address “issues of national importance." But the change doesn’t affect what users can tweet and share on their own, meaning it may not have much impact on widely followed accounts including President Trump, whose tweets already reach more than 66 million users each day.
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Still, the decision comes at a moment when one of Dorsey’s peers, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, continues to field criticism for a controversial policy that essentially allows politicians to lie in ads.
The issue first arose earlier this month, when former Vice President Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, asked Facebook to remove an ad from President Trump’s campaign that contained multiple falsehoods. Facebook declined, and Zuckerberg has defended the policy in recent weeks, stressing the tech giant should not stand in the way of political leaders’ speech.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/30/twitter-ban-all-political-ads-amid-election-uproar/
