Twitter announced Wednesday that it will stop receiving political advertising globally on its platform. The new policy will come into effect on 22 November and will apply to electioneering ads as well as ads catering to political issues.
This move will increase pressure on Facebook’s stance that allows politicians to advertise false statements.
Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, announced,
In a series of tweets, he explained the reasons for this change putting pressure on the controversy surrounding Facebook’s exemption of third-party fact checking on political ads.
This has created a situation where Facebook continues to stand by its commitment to decreasing misinformation while simultaneously allowing politicians to lie in paid campaign ads.
Dorsey explained,
“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.”
Source: Twitter
Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said that this decision “is another attempt by the left to silence Trump and conservatives.” Hilary Clinton called it “the right thing to do for democracy in America and all over the world.” New York Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said it was a “good call.”
On the other hand, eMarketer senior analyst Jasmine Enberg said that political advertising is not part of Twitter’s core business therefore the impact of the change is unknown.
“And given the nature of the platform, people, publishers and politicians will still use Twitter to discuss politics organically, meaning that it won’t fully solve the problem of misinformation,” he said.
“It’s very hard to define ‘political’ things from non-political discourse,” said J Nathan Matias, assistant professor of communication at Cornell University.
“If their policies are too loose or their enforcement too clumsy, Twitter could do real damage to public health, the uptake of government services and civic life.”
