USEPA Photo by Eric Vance. Public domain image
Twitter announces it will ban all paid political advertisements.
Twitter is banning political advertising, taking the opposite position of rival Facebook as social-media companies debate whether paid content should be held to higher standards #WSJWhatsNow pic.twitter.com/mxC3lxWNKD
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 31, 2019
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the move in a tread of tweets you can read here.
Twitter, reacting to growing concern about misinformation spread on social media, is banning all political advertising from its service. Its move strikes a sharp contrast with Facebook, which continues to defend running paid political ads, even false ones, as a free speech priority.
“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,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Wednesday in a series of tweets announcing the new policy.
Facebook has taken fire since it reiterated in September that it will not fact-check ads by politicians or their campaigns, which could allow them to lie freely. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Congress in October that politicians have the right to free speech on Facebook.
Zuckerberg wasted no time responding to Twitter’s move. During Facebook’s conference call for earnings, which began less than an hour after Dorsey’s tweet, the Facebook chief offered an impassioned monologue about what he called his company’s deep belief “that political speech is important.”
Zuckerberg stood by the company’s decision to run unchecked political ads and denied that the choice is financially motivated, saying such ads make up less than half of a percent of Facebook revenue.
This is a good decision because political ads suck, and the only problem with it is that other social media platforms are not immediately following suit.Report
This is one of those things that will be defined by the negative space.
Not by the ads we all agree are political and were banned, but by the ads I think are political but you think not… and either those ads made it through and I’ll be mad…tweeting about how they should never be allowed; or they will be banned and you’ll be mad… tweeting the message anyway since they aren’t political.
At least we call all tweet about sports.Report
So you mean that it will turn Twitter ads, currently largely ignored by the Discourse®, into another front in the partisan battlefields of Online, meaning they’ll be RTed, ironically QTed, dunked on, screenshotted and circulated on other platforms, and generally just getting clicks and eyeballs like crazy?
Huh, when you put it that way it sounds like Twitter did something extraordinarily clever.Report
Remember when I was talking about the importance of Memes?
Well, they just got really freakin’ important for Twitter.Report
Marchmaine has opened my eyes. Twitter, by banning political ads, has discovered a way to make a large class of ads that are kinda political go viral as people fight about whether Twitter is dicking Team Blue and/or Red in the eye by running ads for… I dunno, Chick fil A or the NBA or some shit.
It’s evil and brilliant and I’m kind of in awe.Report
True enough and those will amplify the culture war something awful.
Let’s hope that that doesn’t spill out into Normieland.Report
More or less what Jack said in tweet #2. Gotta earn your retweets. Well… gotta optimize for that.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsReport
WeRateDogs was started specifically as a viral marketing plan, but it also started becoming very…associated with a particular political viewpoint, and overtly advocating in favor of that viewpoint; does that mean it’s political advertising?
if EmojiBot says “smiley + peach = a smiley that supports impeachment, hooray for Speaker Pelosi”, how about that?Report
It doesn’t.
It doesn’t not because of the nature of the account, but because of the nature of the account-holder’s business relationship with Twitter.
Now if that EmojiBot tweet were promoted… well then the answer is maybe yes but more importantly there would be a big fight about it on Twitter, generating tons of Twitter content! Win-win for Jack et al.Report