With a presidential election looming in 2020 and talk of impeachment happening right now, as well as an ongoing debate over free speech and politics on social media, the CEO of Twitter has said the company will no longer accept political ads.
“We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,” said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in a tweetstorm Wednesday.
“A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money,” Dorsey continued.
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…?
— jack ??? (@jack) October 30, 2019
A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.
— jack ??? (@jack) October 30, 2019
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.
— jack ??? (@jack) October 30, 2019
Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.
— jack ??? (@jack) October 30, 2019
These challenges will affect ALL internet communication, not just political ads. Best to focus our efforts on the root problems, without the additional burden and complexity taking money brings. Trying to fix both means fixing neither well, and harms our credibility.
— jack ??? (@jack) October 30, 2019
For instance, it‘s not credible for us to say: “We’re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well…they can say whatever they want! ?”
— jack ??? (@jack) October 30, 2019
We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent. Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we're stopping these too.
— jack ??? (@jack) October 30, 2019
We’re well aware we‘re a small part of a much larger political advertising ecosystem. Some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents. But we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising. I trust this will only grow.
— jack ??? (@jack) October 30, 2019
In addition, we need more forward-looking political ad regulation (very difficult to do). Ad transparency requirements are progress, but not enough. The internet provides entirely new capabilities, and regulators need to think past the present day to ensure a level playing field.
— jack ??? (@jack) October 30, 2019
We’ll share the final policy by 11/15, including a few exceptions (ads in support of voter registration will still be allowed, for instance). We’ll start enforcing our new policy on 11/22 to provide current advertisers a notice period before this change goes into effect.
— jack ??? (@jack) October 30, 2019
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This decision by Twitter separates itself from other companies like Facebook which has resisted the push to stop taking political ads. Facebook is currently in a debate over the spread of misinformation through ads from political campaigns.
The social media company has reiterated it does not think it should be the gatekeeper of political speech. When Mark Zuckerberg recently testified on Capitol Hill, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked him if she could “run advertisements on Facebook targeting Republicans in primaries saying that they voted for the Green New Deal?”
“Probably” was one of Zuckerberg responses.
According to CNBC, the business impact is minimal. Their report says, Facebook and Twitter claim political advertising only makes up a tiny fraction of their overall advertising revenues. (Twitter CFO Ned Segal tweeted Wednesday that the company only booked $3 million in political ad revenue during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, for example.)
According to Dorsey, the ban will go into place in November.
SOURCE: USA TODAY
