Twitter has taken a decision to ban all political advertising on its platform. Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey made the confirmation post on Wednesday via his Twitter handle. The politician will be able to make posts on the platform but they can not promote the content through paid advertisements.
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.
— jack⚡️ (@jack) October 30, 2019
Twitter’s new policy instantly dropped its stock to one percent. Jack Dorsey said that the reason behind taking this step is to taken to prove their commitment toward stopping misinformation on the platform.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Congresswoman, who posted a tweet praising Twitter for its move of banning political ads which spread wrong information. She was involved in a heated conversation with Mark Zuckerberg in his congressional testimony.
This is a good call. Technology – and social media especially – has a powerful responsibility in preserving the integrity of our elections.
Not allowing for paid disinformation is one of the most basic, ethical decisions a company can make.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 30, 2019
Kate Conger from New York Times shared the Biden camp statement through her Twitter account. Joe Biden is a former vice president and current candidate for president of Democratic party nomination.
https://twitter.com/kateconger/status/1189650691876278272?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1189650691876278272&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fin.mashable.com%2Ftech%2F8065%2Ftwitter-ceo-announces-new-policy-that-will-ban-political-ads
Facebook has already been criticized by people including its employees and lawmakers. The company has to policy of not cross-checking or removing the wrong content posted as advertisements by politicians. Elizabeth Warren made a post on Twitter about the Facebook policy of political advertising. She submitted the wrong information that facebook approved instantly.
We intentionally made a Facebook ad with false claims and submitted it to Facebook’s ad platform to see if it’d be approved. It got approved quickly and the ad is now running on Facebook. Take a look: pic.twitter.com/7NQyThWHgO
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 12, 2019
Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg defended Facebooks’s policy for not cross-checking if the information shared in the political ad is correct or not. He totally denied to ban political advertising or even change the policy for fact-checking.
We believe in a democracy, it is important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying.
Mark Zuckerberg made a post on Facebook explaining why his company is not going to follow the footprint of Twitter in banning political ads. He said the company is not at all doing this for the money.
Right now, the content debate is about political ads. Should we block political ads with false statements? Should we block all political ads? Google, YouTube, and most internet platforms run these same ads, most cable networks run these same ads, and of course, national broadcasters are required by law to run them by FCC regulations.
I don’t think it’s right for private companies to censor politicians or the news … And it’s hard to define where to draw the line.
I believe the better approach is to work to increase transparency. Ads on Facebook are already more transparent than anywhere else. We have a political ads archive so anyone can scrutinize every ad that’s run — you can see every message, who saw it, how much was spent — something that no TV or print media does
Some people accuse us of allowing this speech because they think all we care about is making money. That’s wrong. I can assure you, from a business perspective, the controversy this creates far outweighs the very small percent of our business that these political ads make up. We estimate these ads from politicians will be less than 0.5% of our revenue next year. That’s not why we’re doing this
Earlier in this month. the controversy of Political ads started when Joe Biden sent a letter to Facebook to remove advertisement of Trump campaign that had false information. Facebook did not approve of his demand saying it does not affect the political advertisement policies. Now that Twitter has taken the step forward to ban Political ads, there’s more pressure on Facebook. As so many people are supporting Twitter but are unhappy with Facebook’s decision of carrying on its controversial policy.