Social media giant Twitter says it is banning all political advertisements on its platform, CEO Jack Dorsey announced on Oct. 30.
Dorsey explained in a series of Twitter posts that the company decided to stop political advertisers from receiving an unfair advantage in having their “highly optimized and targeted political message” reach more people by paying for that reach. He said the reach should be earned through user interaction with the post or account.
“A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet,” he wrote. “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 justifying the ban by saying that political ads present challenges to public conversations as it allows for misinformation to spread quickly and at an overwhelming scale.
He argued that the decision was not about stifling free expression but rather to reduce the unfair advantage in allowing advertisers to pay for increased reach.
“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,” Dorsey continued.
Twitter’s announcement comes as Facebook is facing heat for its decision to not fact-check ads by politicians or their campaigns.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the House Financial Services Committee on Oct. 23 political ads made up too small a percentage of their business to justify the burden of fact-checking on his company.
He also told the committee that he believes in giving people a voice, including politicians and advocacy groups who otherwise would not be able to get their messages out into the public.
“We believe in a Democracy it is important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying,” he said.
Facebook said their decision is grounded in “Facebook’s fundamental belief in free expression, respect for the democratic process.” Biden’s campaign slammed the decision saying that the ad is part of the spread of “objectively false information to influence public opinion poisons the public discourse and chips away at our democracy.”
The social media company received backlash for their decision.
In response to Twitter’s decision, the Trump campaign issued a statement saying that it was another attempt to silence conservatives as “Twitter knows President Trump has the most sophisticated online program ever known.”
“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?” Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale wrote.
Details of Twitter’s new policy will be released on Nov. 15, while the ban will come into effect on Nov. 22, Dorsey said.
