Twitter’s co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey has just announced that the social media company will no longer allow political advertising. The move to ban political ads was announced by Dorsey via a series of tweets, which outlined the company’s attempt to deal with the “entirely new challenges to civic discourse” that internet ads pose, including “machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes.”
Below is the majority of Dorsey’s sequence of tweets:
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
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
Dorsey also noted that he and the company will share the final policy by November 15, which will include exceptions for some political ads, such as ads in support of voter registration. The new policy will go into effect on November 22, “to provide current advertisers a notice period before this change goes into effect.”
The move comes amidst continued growing concern for the way political speech is handled on social media platforms. Just a week ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by Congress in regards to how exactly the behemoth social network plans on handling political ads. Here is some of his exchange with Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:
Zuckerberg grilled by AOC on Facebook’s controversial policy to not fact-check political ads pic.twitter.com/MBS3seX3RT
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 24, 2019
Although Facebook will continue to run political ads, it’s said that it wants to make them more transparent. The social media giant says that it will also label state-controlled media and “more prominently label content across Facebook and Instagram that has been rated false by third-party fact checkers.”
We’ll also more prominently label content across Facebook and Instagram that has been rated false by third-party fact checkers pic.twitter.com/Aqbo0JHjA8
— Facebook (@facebook) October 21, 2019
According to a cursory glance, Dorsey’s move to ban political ads seems to be earning the approval of users, who, by contrast, seem to be dissatisfied with Zuckerberg’s political ad strategy.
See how easy? And he didn’t even have to be humiliated by @AOC.
???
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) October 30, 2019
Even American whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has been vocal about his disapproval of the way social media handles people’s data, praised the decision.
Wow. Big move by @jack, and a bigger contrast to @Facebook‘s increasingly problematic policy positions. https://t.co/nm9rckaKHc
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 30, 2019
As of this writing, there was no response to Twitter’s decision from the official White House Twitter account nor President Trump’s personal Twitter account. At least one Democratic presidential candidate tweeted a positive reaction to Dorsey’s decision.
Feature image: The White House