WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Social networking giant Twitter Inc. (TWTR) Wednesday announced plans to ban all political advertising on its platform.
'We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons...' CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted.
The new policy will come into effect on November 22 and will apply globally to all electioneering ads, as well as ads related to political issues.
Dorsey explained the reasons behind banning political ads in a series of tweets.
'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,' Dorsey tweeted.
'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,' he added.
According to Dorsey, internet political ads present an entirely new challenges to civic discourse. The challenges include machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes.
He took a dig at Facebook's recent arguments by saying that 'it's not credible for us to say: 'We're working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, but if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad.well...they can say whatever they want!'
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