Twitter Bans Political Advertising Globally: Here is why

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Recently, Twitter banned political advertising on its platform. Here is why and how they intend to execute this new policy.

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As the media advanced, advertising was magnified, with the inclusion of political advertising. To say social media has contributed immensely to advertising is an understatement. As the world continued to embrace the new media, politicians took to the space and exploited the opportunity to grow their ideologies and push their political agenda.

We have actually seen sagas arise due to political advertising and how social media has influenced people’s political decision

One has only got the simple job of following a politician or a political enthusiast and the political adverts will come right through.

On October 30th, 2019, Jack Dorsey, a board member of Twitter, on behalf of Twitter, shunned political advertising when he announced through subtweets, that Twitter was no longer interested in publishing political adverts:

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952?s=19

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…”

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Why Twitter bans political advertising?

Following the thread, Jack brings to our attention that payment of political messages reach removes Twitter’s enjoyment of the right to earn from the true followership of the accounts on which the political posts are published. Not only does Twitter struggle to optimize political messages but it also believes that internet advertising has incredible power to make risky the business of political influence.

Many challenges that affect all sort of internet communication bring an additional burden of fixing many issues at once, which compromises Twitter’s credibility,

“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.”

Twitter puts a stop to ONLY candidate ads

Apparently, Twitter is putting a stop to only candidate ads as it is unfair for candidates to push their issues through bought ads. In that regard, issue ads have been stopped as well.

Twitter believes that, like many social movements, the political advertisers can also reach massive scale minus any advertising, and that this ban is no detrimental factor to the advertising politicians, and that it will not favor incumbents as some people may argue. Twitter acknowledges its position in the political sphere,

“We’re well aware we’re a small part of a much larger political advertising ecosystem.”

Regulators are called upon to think past the present day as they ensure level playing fields for ad regulation since the internet happens to have a complex nature that requires much more creative regulatory standards past the ordinary,

“…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.”

Twitter to issue a full policy on banning political advertising

Twitter will be sharing its final policy by 11/15, which will be inclusive of some exceptions such as ads in support of voter registration.

The new Twitter policy on political ad intolerance will see its first enforcement on 11/22 so as to provide a notice period to current advertisers, just before the policy is implemented.

As a final note, Jack says,

“…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.”

Conclusion:

In one way, Twitter bans political advertising in a bid to overcome the saga that Facebook encountered during the Cambridge Analytica saga.

The question now is, is Facebook going to do the same move as Twitter has done?