The digital social networking platform has announced it will no longer allow political advertisements.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the decision on Wednesday, saying it believed political messaging ‘should be earned, not bought’.
Dorsey said that the manner in which the platform was being used was damaging to political processes:
‘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.’
A final policy would be released in mid-November.
There was mixed reaction to this move. President Donald Trump’s campaign manager for 2020, Brad Parscale, commented: ‘Twitter bans political ads in yet another attempt by the left to silence Trump and conservatives.’ President Trump has regularly courted controversy on Twitter.
Bill Russo, who works for the campaign to elect former Vice President Biden, commented: ‘When faced with a choice between ad dollars and the integrity of our democracy, it is encouraging that, for once, revenue did not win out.’
Twitter draws relatively little revenue from political advertisements, so is unlikely to take damage from this move.
However, it has been noted that this comes at a time when Facebook is facing criticism for exempting political advertisements from a policy that prohibits false advertising claims.