Twitter is banning political adversiting across its platform

Twitter on Wednesday announced that it will no longer allow political advertising on its platform.

Announcing the ban in a Twitter thread, the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey explained that “political message reach should be earned, not bought”.

This means that political parties and government organisations will no longer be able to buy advertising space on the platform.

“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,” Dorsey further said, alluding to issues prevalent on Facebook.

In fact, the CEO criticised Facebook’s latest policies regarding the spread of misinformation and inauthentic behaviour from governments.

“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, but if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well…they can say whatever they want!” he said.

Though Twitter is still finalising its new policies surrounding political advertising, the company will also make some exceptions, namely for “ads in support of voter registration”.

The company will announce the final policies on 15 November 2019.

Feature image: Memeburn