
Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey announced on Wednesday that Twitter will ban all political advertising around the world starting on November 22.
“We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,” CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted.
“While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics,” he added.
Many people wonder, through tweets, how Twitter will define the political ads or “issue ads”. Twitter includes issues like climate change, guns, healthcare, immigration, abortion, civil rights, immigration, national security, social security, taxes and trade under its political content policies.
However, the posts related to voting registration will still be allowed.
“We’re well aware we ‘re a small part of a much larger political advertising ecosystem. Some might argue our actions today could favour incumbents. But we have witnessed many social movements reach a massive scale without any political advertising. I trust this will only grow,” Dorsey wrote.
Twitter’s chief financial officer, Ned Segal said that Twitter earned around $3 million from political ads in 2018. “This decision was based on principle, not money,” he said.
Facebook also spoke about political advertising on Wednesday. “In a democracy, I don’t think it’s right for private companies to censor politicians or the news,” Mark Zuckerberg said. He also said that the best choice is to permit political advertising.
Facebook is much bigger than Twitter. Twitter said that it has 126m daily active users, while Facebook has 163 billion.
Twitter stock fell by 1.2% after the announcement. Although in September Twitter climbed to $45 a share, it has now fallen under $30. In their Q3 report, Twitter had lost 23% compared to last year.
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Last updated: 01 November 2019.
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