Twi er to ban political adverts

Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey announced the short message platform would bar all political ads as part of an effort to curb misinformation.

Twitter said Wednesday it would stop accepting political advertising globally on its platform, responding to growing concerns over misinformation from politicians on social media.

Dorsey tweeted that 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”.

The move comes with Facebook under pressure to apply fact-checking to politicians running ads with debunked claims.

Dorsey said the new policy, details of which will be unveiled next month and enforced from November 22, would ban ads on political issues as well as from candidates.

“We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent,” he said. “Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we’re stopping these too.”

Dorsey said the company took the action to head off potential problems from “machine learning-based optimisation of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes.”

Twitter’s move is in contrast to the Facebook policy that allows political speech and ads to run without fact-checking.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said political advertising is not a major source of revenue but he believes it is important to allow everyone a “voice,” and that banning political ads would favour incumbents. – Citizen reporter