Twitter bans political advertising worldwide.What does this mean for political actors now?

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced yesterday evening in a tweet series (read here for the original tweets) that all political advertisements will be stopped worldwide by the end of November. The policy guideline detailing what exactly will be classified as “political advertising“ including exceptions from the ban will be published by November 15. The new rules themselves will be in effect November 22.
How was this step justified?
In several tweets, Dorsey further justified this decision with the multitude of technological threats to the democratic discourse. Machine-learning, Message Optimization, Deep Fakes, the purchase of reach and no fact-based and false communication are named as central problems that Twitter wants to combat with this very drastic step:
“All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale. We’re well aware we’re a small part of a much larger political advertising ecosystem. Some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents. But we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising. (…) We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent.
Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we’re stopping these too. I trust this will only grow. A final note. 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.“ Jack Dorsey, October 30, 2019
What does this actually mean?
Twitter will publish the new policy on November 15. It will describe in detail and to what extent “Issue Ads” by actors outside the classical definition of political parties or candidates (i.e. associations, NGOs, trade unions, foundations, social movements, public institutions and companies) will be affected. Dorsey already announced in his statement that there would be only a few exceptions.
The decisive factor will be whether Twitter will also classify information campaigns by ministries, member recruitment campaigns by NGOs or general digital public affairs as “political communication“ that would subsequently be banned under the new rules. So stay tuned for the 15th of November if you’re using Twitter for social or political purposes.
What can political organizations do now? 3 concrete action steps
On thing is clear: Even with these upcoming restrictions in targeting, Twitter will remain a central instrument for the digital political formation of opinions and decision making in most of Western democracies. Politics must always take place where people are engaged with one another and political opinions are shaped. Therefore, strategic and long-term integrated communication planning will become even more important than ever before: Political actors on Twitter will need to build up active organic communities, followers and supporters in a sustainable way, in order to promote the respective political contents and positions.
Action 1: Strategic Channel Positioning and a Concept for Organic Growth Building for the Organization
More important than ever before is the necessity to grow without being able position of a Twitter channel on a matrix in relation to thematic or political competitors and the thematic and target group oriented focus. Only with a clear position can strategic, communicative and structural measures suitable for Organic Growth Building (i.e. pure channel growth through good content and dialogue without the use of financial resources) be identified. The strategic positioning Matrix and development of topic-specific communities is particularly important for political organizations that have several politicians, spokespersons or activists and therefore need to enhance the profile of each individual as part of the overall organizational development.
By shifting a channel to another quadrant strategic decisions for content formats, target audiences and key performance indicators vary. It enables a mapping of competitors as well as supporters and see where potential allies or threats for political issues might occur

Action 2: Content Funneling approach put into action for Twitter
Attractive innovative content that surprises again and again, engages with the audience and brings them into dialogue will be decisive in determining what political content will attract the immediate attention of the audience and therefore will generate an impact. It is necessary to rethink digital political content on Twitter from now on.
People’s attention span has fallen down to the level of a goldfish and social and political concerns compete with paid marketing messages that are not affected by restrictions on advertising opportunities.

Therefore, it is recommended to approach complex political issues as a journey for the users and to break them down into several aspects: The Attention Trigger (“Why is this topic specifically relevant to your life?“), an Informing Aspect (“What are the most important facts that you should know about this topic or our position?”) and finally a Convincing Finisher (“If you are interested in the topic so far, here are concrete options on how you can further support our cause or what you can do right now to change something!”). Political issues especially are often complex and need additional context — therefore people have to be addressed in a funneling logic, which will, in this case, certainly not result in a sales situation, but in the mediation of political content.
Action 3: Three circles of actionable insights for every organization
If it is no longer possible to address specific target groups in certain communities, it is essential to better understand in advance which specific topics, ideas and arguments are being discussed in one’s own relevant target groups. Therefore, it becomes even more important for each organization to evaluate and understand current debate patterns through a specific analysis strategy using available technology as a first sense-making step. In the second step, the meaning-making, organizations need to be able to derive concrete “Actionable Insights“ from these analyses and data points. These are then used in the third step, the so-called decision-making, as the basis for developing data-based communication strategies for Twitter, continuously measuring one’s own messages for resonance and relevance and thus permanently improving them.

These are three strategic measures to make Political Communication on Twitter more strategic, smarter and data-based without the use of paid political advertising. In Germany for instance, political parties have so far placed little paid content on Twitter anyway, compared to the USA or other countries. However, the company’s decision must also be examined critically, as this is a further step towards self-regulation by a company without real government control. Jeff Jarvis, an open critic of President Trump and professor of journalism, has already criticized Twitter’s plans: “If we stop cheap and efficient political advertising, then we will have left over campaigns of big money on television — exactly that, what we want to leave behind us for decades. We also remain with the established rulers, who work with big money and the support of big parties, and therefore have the power.“
What now? A look ahead.
One thing is certain, the clock can no longer be turned back into the pre-digital age. Political organizations are facing the challenge to involve people with relevant content on Twitter, to convince them or to make them supporters of their cause. This needs to be embedded in a rule construct that respects the principles of our democracy and its discourse order. But Politics and Government need to call the shots. We can’t just leave it up to the platforms to regulated themselves and hope the challenges of a increasingly digitized society will disappear.
Despite the lowest digital political advertising budget within Germany in the European elections, the AfD, for example, achieved by far the highest interaction rates on all channels. This is due to the problematic design of the platform algorithms, which can be broken down to the core task of “Maximizing User Attention”. Algorithms are designed to show you content you agree with or love in order to make you stick as long as possible to the Newsfeeds. The complete ban of political advertising in the digital space is not a comprehensive solution to our current problems. Political organizations have to engage with citizens, voters or supporters where they are on a daily basis and they have to compete with one another in a fair and constructive competition. The purpose of political ads in an ideal case is to serve as a connector between Government and citizens, between politics and voters and social causes and supporters. We just need to make sure the playing field is fair, just and has clear mandatory rules for everyone.
So what is needed right now, is a coherent, conclusive and effective legislation worldwide about which specific rules (e.g. hate speech, transparency of algorithms and their structure, ban of digital political advertising on election days, A/B-Testing ban for politics, etc.) should apply to political election advertising in the digital space in general and how platforms will be liable to implement them directly. Given the the increased polarization of political discourse, this debate must be conducted quickly and non-partisan to develop appropriate solutions.
There is no time to lose. This is about the future of democracy and the formation of political opinion-making in an increasingly digital society.
