Twitter: the dissemination of political messages must be won, not purchased
In the opposite direction, Facebook is following Twitter in political ads. The CEO, Jack Dorsey , announced via the platform that Twitter is removing all political ads worldwide, whether they come from candidates or interest groups. Exclusion does not exclude ads that are not partisan, such as the general call for voters to increase their participation in the process. An integrated policy will be announced on November 15 and implemented from November 22.
A political message is spread when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for dissemination removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages into the world. We believe that this decision should not be influenced by money. .While internet advertising is extremely powerful and very effective for marketers, this power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes and affect millions of lives. Political internet advertising poses entirely new challenges in public debate: machine learning optimization and micro-targeting, uncontrolled misinformation and deep fakes. All in greater frequency, specialization and huge scale. These challenges will affect ALL Internet communication, not just political ads. Better to focus on the root of the problem, without the added burden and complexity that money brings. Trying to make both means that we are not going to make either one right and that is bad for our credibility.
For example it is unreliable for us to say, “We work hard to stop people from fooling our systems and spreading false information, but if someone pays us to target and force people to see our political advertising … then … they can say whatever they want! “
We thought about removing only the candidate ads, but the ad version provides a way to bypass this. In addition, it is not fair for non-bidders to buy ads on topics they want to promote. So we stop them too.
We are well aware that we are a small part of a much larger political advertising ecosystem. Many may say that our actions today can benefit officials. But we have witnessed many social movements that have been widely circulated without any political advertising. I hope this develops.
In addition, we need more political advertising regulations looking forward (very difficult). Ad transparency requirements are a development but not enough. The internet provides completely new possibilities and lawmakers need to think beyond today to ensure a fair game.
One final note. This has nothing to do with freedom of speech. This is about paid distribution. And paying to increase the spread of a political message has major implications that today’s democracy infrastructures may not be ready to handle. It’s worth taking a step back to look at the issue.
