Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, announced on Wednesday that the site would ban all political adverts worldwide from 22nd November this year.
Dorsey announced in a series of tweets why Twitter was banning political adverts, saying that the site believes political message reach “should be earned, not bought”:
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
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
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
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
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
A final note. This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address.
— jack 🌍🌏🌎 (@jack) October 30, 2019
READ MORE: British Police to Use Twitter to Predict Hate Crimes
Many were shocked by the decision, criticising Twitter for what some see as an attempt to silence the voices of conservatives, with others pointing out that what “political adverts” constitutes is very unclear:
Translation:
"Our algorithm is programmed to give certain people reach so we've realized we don't need to let anyone place political advertisements." https://t.co/mi3Xhh3XC7
— Brett MacDonald (@TweetBrettMac) October 30, 2019
So stupid. Who at Twitter will determine what ads are "political" and which ones aren't?
Supporting a candidate, sure, that's obvious.
Supporting capitalism? The Green New Deal? Abortion? The NRA? Planned Parenthood?
Twitter has no idea what it's doinghttps://t.co/BQcY7CWTYq
— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) October 30, 2019
If Twitter is no longer accepting political ads, they must discontinue the Mainstream Media accounts. Their tweets are also in-kind contributions to the Democrat Party
— Patrick Howley (@HowleyReporter) October 30, 2019
So @Twitter, are any of these political ads?
– Planned Parenthood ads
– Live Action pro-life ads
– Studies showing cost of Medicare-For-All
– Gender neutral penguin chicks
– Religion & marriage’s impact on povertyOr are those ads just about healthcare, aquatic life, & society?
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) October 30, 2019
This is hilarious given your new policy to remove the engagement options on the tweets of world leaders. So now they have no organic option. No paid option. This is ultimately about control. Just be honest about it. https://t.co/NT2bwv2EiK
— GabTrends.com (@getongab) October 30, 2019
Those voices included President Trump’s campaign team. Brad Parscale, the President’s campaign manager for the 2020 election, released a statement online, noting that they “would not be surprised if Twitter lifted the ban after 2020”:
Twitter just walked away from hundreds of millions of dollars of potential revenue, a very dumb decision for their stockholders. Will Twitter also be stopping ads from biased liberal media outlets who will now run unchecked as they buy obvious political content meant to attack Republicans? This is yet another attempt to silence conservatives, since Twitter knows President Trump has the most sophisticated online program ever known.
READ MORE: Twitter Gears Up for Meme Ban Ahead of 2020
Twitter’s decision to ban political adverts is in stark contrast to the recent announcement from Facebook that they would not “fact-check” adverts from political candidates, a decision that some of their employees complained about in an open letter. The employees claimed that “free speech and paid speech are not the same thing” and that not “fact-checking” candidates “allows politicians to weaponize our platform by targeting people who believe that content posted by political figures is trustworthy.”
READ MORE: Facebook: “We Do Not” Have an Anti-Conservative Bias
A spokesman for Facebook defended their policy:
Facebook’s culture is built on openness so we appreciate our employees voicing their thoughts on this important topic. We remain committed to not censoring political speech, and will continue exploring additional steps we can take to bring increased transparency to political ads.
