Twitter zaps all pol ads
As under-fire Facebook stays defiant . . .
Twitter will ban all political advertisements starting Nov. 22, the company announced Wednesday — as rival platform Facebook continued to defend its ad policies.
Candidate and issues-based ads alike will be prohibited on Twitter globally, with a few exceptions such as those in support of voter registration, CEO Jack Dorsey said.
“We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter,” Dorsey tweeted. “We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
But Facebook, which has come under fire this month for allowing politicians to lie in ads and refusing to take down misleading missives, doubled down on its decision.
“Although I’ve considered whether we should not carry [political] ads in the past, and I’ll continue to do so, on balance, so far, I’ve thought we should continue,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told investors in a quarterly earnings call. “Ads can be an important part of voice, especially for candidates and advocacy groups the media might not otherwise cover so they can get their message into debates.”
But Dorsey argues online political advertising “brings significant risk to politics, where it can be used to influence votes and to affect . . . lives.”
But political advertising makes up only a small sliver of Twitter’s overall revenue. The company does not break out specific figures each quarter, but said political-ad spending for the 2018 midterm election was less than $3 million.
The social-media company reported $824 million in thirdquarter revenue.
The changes are not about free expression, but about advertisers paying to force their political message on users, Dorsey continued. “Paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.”
He noted that online ads have created new issues for “civic discourse” such as “deep fakes,” which are realistic videos that make it look as if people have said or done things they did not.
“These challenges will affect ALL Internet communication, not just political ads,” Dorsey wrote. “Best to focus our efforts on the root problems, without the additional burden and complexity taking money brings.”
While Zuckerberg and others have argued that banning political ads would favor incumbent candidates, Dorsey said “we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising.”
He called for “more forwardlooking . . . regulation.
“The Internet provides entirely new capabilities, and regulators need to think past the present day to ensure a level playing field,” he wrote.
Last month, Facebook announced a change to its ad policies.
It had previously banned ads that contained information that had been debunked by thirdparty fact-checking services, but will now allow them for the sake of “newsworthiness.”