Twitter to ban all political advertising, raising pressure on Facebook

[BeyondGeography]

Source: The Guardian

Twitter will ban all political advertising, the company’s chief executive officer Jack Dorsey announced on Wednesday, in a move that will increase pressure on Facebook over its controversial stance to allow politicians to advertise false statements.

The new policy, announced via Dorsey’s Twitter account, will come into effect on 22 November and will apply globally to all electioneering ads, as well as ads related to political issues. The timing means the ban will be in place in time for the UK snap election.

Twitter had previously implemented rules and restrictions for political advertising.

The announcement comes as Facebook is embroiled in a controversy over its decision to exempt ads by politicians from third-party fact-checking and from a policy that bans false statements from paid advertisements.

More to come...

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/30/twitter-ban-political-advertising-us-election?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[2naSalit]

1. Good!

Should help expose FB for the propaganda outlet that it is.

[Qutzupalotl]

9. I wonder, though...

where else but Facebook will they go? Facebook is still the biggest social media outlet as far as I know. And their policies on political ads are arbitrary and suck. So I fear this will drive our candidates into a minefield, where they will get tons of negative and false feedback.

[BeyondGeography]

2. Jack Dorsey's tweet string starts here

Link to tweet

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Beat me by a second.

Big news!

Tweeted announcement -

Link to tweet

TEXT
jack 🌍🌏🌎
✔
@jack

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…🧵
5,973
4:05 PM - Oct 30, 2019

[BeyondGeography]

4. Happens once a year

You, my friend, are the champ.

Really good news for a change, too.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. ....

(I'm trying to set up lights for my citrus trees that I'm bringing in for winter and have CSPAN3 running on 2 floors while I go back and forth doing that and posting here )

[calimary]

24. Well God Bless!

[cstanleytech]

5. Every company should do this as the 2016 elections proved how easy it is for a foreign nation

to influence another one via targeted propaganda..

[applegrove]

6. Good move. You can't both a place people trust daily and filled with hatefilled lies

from your enemies during an election. It doesn't work as a business model.

[demmiblue]

8. Thread:

Link to tweet

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…🧵

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.

While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.

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.

These challenges will affect ALL internet communication, not just political ads. Best to focus our efforts on the root problems, without the additional burden and complexity taking money brings. Trying to fix both means fixing neither well, and harms our credibility.

For instance, it‘s not credible for us to say: “We’re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well...they can say whatever they want! 😉”

We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent. Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we're stopping these too.

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.

In addition, 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.

We’ll share the final policy by 11/15, including a few exceptions (ads in support of voter registration will still be allowed, for instance). We’ll start enforcing our new policy on 11/22 to provide current advertisers a notice period before this change goes into effect.

A final note. 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.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1189634360472829952.html

[stuffmatters]

13. Wonderful statement!

[JudyM]

18. Certainly is.

[BlueIdaho]

10. Wow! Ok Facebook - the whole world is watching... nt.

[durablend]

11. But they'll still post Twittler's lies, correct?

[bluestarone]

12. Don't know BUT

I bet they do!!

[SunSeeker]

14. Good!

[keithbvadu2]

15. No problem. Facebook and Russia and Saudi Arabia buy Twitter.

No problem. Facebook and Russia and Saudi Arabia buy Twitter.

[PSPS]

16. I was going to bring up "issue advertising" but I see that's included which is good

Back in the old days, when media companies acted like trusted members of the community instead of whores (anything for ad money,) the standard practice was to refuse all "issue advertising." All advertising had to promote either a specific product or a specific service. The only exception was political campaign ads for a specific candidate and those had to conform to the company's standards and practices (i.e., the same content guidelines applied to all of its programming and advertising.) Back then, a broadcast (over-the-air) station could actually lose their license to operate.

But, then came Raygun and deregulation. And the FCC has been "captured" now, although its reach has never included cable/satellite/internet programming. Those operate purely at the whim of their owners, like zuckerberg, and they're blatant whores and not "trusted members of the community."

[jberryhill]

27. Like promoting a book by Al Gore on climate change

Is this "issue advertising"?

[PSPS]

29. That was actually a PSA which was run free of charge. It was produced by the Ad Council.

[jberryhill]

30. So?

Neither of those statements answers the question of whether it is political advertising.

What if it was the identical spot, produced by an environmental group and paid to run?

Are you saying that would make a difference?

If so, then explain the difference. The same viewers see the same spot with the same content. But, if people the viewers don't even know paid for it or not, then that makes it "political advertising"?

Explain what difference it makes whether it was produced by the Ad Council or the Sierra Club.

[iluvtennis]

17. Excellent news.

[bucolic_frolic]

19. My crazy bold take on it

This action today means that someday, Twitter will own Facebook. Own.

[sinkingfeeling]

20. Good. Does that include Fat Nixon's chest thumping?

[pecosbob]

21. Cool...now ban Orange Hitler

?itemid=15074351

[ET Awful]

22. Doesn't self-promotion count as advertising? n/t

n/t

[Hassler]

23. Meanwhile, Zuck the Schmuck continues to play dumb.

[warmfeet]

25. Excellent!

Perhaps we can learn something from this shit show - like preserving a Democracy.

Well, maybe not. Let's see how it plays out.

[jberryhill]

26. What is "political advertising"?

Do they have a working definition of "political advertising"?

Are any of the following things "political advertising":

1. I write a book critical of a candidate for office, I want to advertise the sale of my book.

2. I produce a movie about hunger and poverty. I want to advertise my movie.

3. I am a candidate for office who has written a book about economics. I want to advertise my book.

4. I am an ex-Trump administration official who is doing a lecture tour critical of Trump. I want to advertise my lectures.


Which of those things are "political advertising"? Maybe I should post this as poll.

[DeminPennswoods]

33. It's paying for "reach", micro-targeting and all of that

Dorsey explains:

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.

[Initech]

28. Should have happened *YEARS* ago!

Anyways this is definitely a good move!

[DeminPennswoods]

31. Good move

Zuckerberg said political ads were about 1% of facebook ad revenue. They are the same relation as a fly to an elephant. A global ban could be easily instituted and hardly dent facebook's revenue stream.

[olddad65]

34. Fuck twitter, fuck Fakebook, fuck Trump, fuck Russia