Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, announced that his social network will no longer publish paid political announcements around the world. In a series of tweets, he explained that the decision stems from the fact that politics should “gain” people’s attention, not rely on simply buying it.
https://twitter.com/jack/status/969234275420655616
Dorsey added that he is aware that Twitter is only a small part of the online reality where paid political announcements can be spread, indirectly referring to Facebook, a much larger social network that allows candidates and parties to advertise freely.
“It’s not credible,” Dorsey wrote “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!'”
Dorsey also clarified that “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.”
In recent weeks, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg encountered numerous criticisms concerning the solutions he adopted in order to manage political advertisement across his social network. The company has decided to keep online paid politicians’ ads regardless of their content.
By banning politicians’ advertisements, Twitter will give up millions of dollars in revenues, but at the same time it will be able to avoid being in the position Facebook stands in at the moment.
So far, former democratic candidate Hillary Clinton welcomed the ban and social media analyst Carl Miller stated that it was “one of the first times a tech giant has stepped back in concern for the enormous disruptions they’re doing to the institutions that don’t move as quickly as them“.
However, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Pascale called the decision “another attempt by the left to silence Trump and conservatives.”
The banning of paid political announcements will begin on November 22 across Twitter.
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