*Twitter is saying Hell-to-the-NO as far as any more political advertising on its platform. In fact, the digital messaging company is getting out of a business that has been fraught with controversy over questions of whether spots need to be fact-checked and verified, writes Deadline.
“A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “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,” Dorsey added.
If you’re wondering how Twitter’s policy compares to Facebook, which recently announced its political advertising policy, the difference is Facebook will not only accept political ads, but won’t even bother to fact check them. That, of course, has been a hot issue headed into the 2020 presidential campaign, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been criticized by candidates like Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren for the policy, which they say contributes to an atmosphere of misinformation.
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It was just last week that Zuckerberg defended the policy in an appearance before a House Committee.
“Our policy is we do not fact check politicians’ speech, and the reason for that is that we believe that in a democracy it is important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying,” he said.
He continued to defend the company’s policy on Facebook’s earnings call, while noting that such spots account for just a small sliver of the company’s revenue.
It seems Dorsey just plain doesn’t want to bothered. He wrote that 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.”
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