Twitter has announced plans to ban all political advertising worldwide, saying that the reach of such messages “should be earned, not bought”.
Company CEO, Jack Dorsey said in a tweet that while internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, the power brings significant risks to politics.
News of the ban has divided America’s political camps ahead of the 2020 election.
In a thread he said: ‘We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.
‘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.’
In another tweet Mr Dorsey said: ‘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.’
