By Elisabeth Seiple
CEO Jack Dorsey announced in a tweet last month that Twitter will no longer run political ads on its site, stating “[Twitter has] made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.” Politicians and advocates will still be able to tweet freely on the site, and Dorsey argues that this helps protect personal freedoms: “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.” Starting now, ads pertaining to political candidates, parties, elected officials, referendums, pieces of legislation, or judicial decisions or nominees will be banned under Twitter’s advertising policies.
While the move was largely scrutinized by Republican lawmakers and advocates, Democratic and liberal activists also criticized the new policy for its wide-reaching ban on any advertising relating to any political issue. What this means is that pro-life activists, immigration reform advocates, and climate change organizations would all no longer be allowed to advertise on Twitter. Liz Winstead, an abortion rights activist writing for Vox, highlights the reliance of organizations she works with on platforms like Twitter to advertise their events and in combatting false information surrounding abortion. Of course, the policy is a two-way street, and organizations promoting conservative causes will be facing similar hurdles.
Other commentators on the policy have also emphasized Twitter’s minimal income from political advertising compared to other types of ads. In 2018, Twitter made just three million dollars from politicians ads, compared to 2.61 billion from advertising overall. With this in mind, Twitter’s “sacrifice” is relatively low stakes for the company. On the other hand, companies with larger investments in political advertising have taken steps towards reforms, albeit no other platform has banned them outright; most notably, Google, who owns YouTube as well as controlling ads on many non-Google-owned websites. Google has stated that it will raise the minimum number of people an ad campaign can target at a time, meaning advertisers can no longer target incredibly specific audiences based on their data patterns. They also adjusted restrictins on targeting users based on age, sex, gender, and zip code, and banned “demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust” in elections.
The effects of Twitter and Google’s new restrictions remain to be seen by many. As the primaries approach, most look towards Facebook, who has been at the center of many election interference investigations and paid billions of dollars in fines for its nonchalant attitude towards data harvesting, to see whether these reforms will have long lasting results. Pressure continues to grow for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to introduce any kind of ad reform after previously asserting that Facebook will remain a bastion of political free speech and would not remove ads containing even clearly erroneous claims. For now, Zuckerberg has stated that there will need to be further discussion as to whether or not Facebook will reform their policies, but has promised no particular action, and it is unlikely given the reputation of Facebook as a powerhouse for political ads, and its large profit from these ads, that Facebook will implement anything nearly as far-reaching as Twitter’s ban.
Image source: https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/jack-dorsey-decides-to-ban-political-ads-on-twitter.html