Twitter is working hard to be… less political.
The CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey (@jack) announced on Wednesday that the platform will be banning all political advertisements starting November 22nd.
Dorsey justified the new policy in a series of tweets saying that political messages on the platform should be earned instead of bought to make the platform more fair.
“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,” he tweeted. “We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.”
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) ٣٠ أكتوبر ٢٠١٩
This decision was supported by a survey from consumer polling group CivicScience (@civicscience) where out of 2142 responses, 56% of the people who answered strongly agree with this new ban.
Majority of people support @Twitter's new policy to ban political ads from its platform pic.twitter.com/dwvVpZev53
— CivicScience (@CivicScience) ٣١ أكتوبر ٢٠١٩
Internet political ads could have a large effect on the platform users and could sometimes carry misleading and harmful information.
In 2018, Twitter laid out a similar policy filtering political issues on the platform are allowed to be advertised. Accounts would first need to go through a process of applying for certification, get verified, and their posts would be specially marked before being posted.
Twitter has yet to confirm which “issue ads” will fall under the new ban as they could mean anything from political candidates and campaigns to non-profit organizations like Planned Parenthood and even media news accounts.
By November 15, Twitter will announce the full policy explaining everything users need to know about this ban. There will be exceptions to the ban including ads that encourage people to go out and vote.
Jack Dorsey trusts that even if this ban will have impact on political advertisers, they still have the capability to make their social movement grow without it.
“A final note. This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach,” he tweeted. “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.”
What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.
Image credit: Shutterstock.