Yesterday, Twitter announced that it would ban political ads from platform . The move goes against Facebook, which recently said it would allow political ads, whether they are true or not.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said of his decision: “We believe that the delivery and success of political messaging should be earned, not bought.”.
The ad ban will go into effect on November 22.Twitter will share the new rules with users by November 15. According to Dorsey, there will be some exceptions. For example, voter registration ads will still run on the platform.
Dorsey 's decision comes at odds with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg , who recently strongly defended his company's policy , stating that it will continue to allow political ads on its platform
“From a business perspective, it might be easier for us to choose a different path than the one we’re taking,” Zuckerberg said. “Today is certainly a historic moment of social tension, and I see the important role company plays in defending free speech … In a democracy, I don’t think it’s right for private companies to censor politicians or news.”
Facebook has been heavily criticized for its stance. A few days ago, Zuckerberg spent six hours discussing a range of issues with the US, including its policy on political advertising. According to the chairwoman of the committee, Maxine Waters, Facebook's decision to avoid banning political advertising could have negative consequences. The chairwoman also said that: "Facebook's claim to promote free speech is not true."
Dorsey's announcement yesterday showed that Twitter's policy conflicts with Facebook's.
“This is not about free speech,” Dorsey wrote in a tweet. It’s about paying to broadcast political messages.
Additionally, Dorsey stated that “ online presents new challenges to political discourse: optimization of messaging through machine learning and targeting of specific groups, uncontrolled misleading information, deepfakes.”
In his tweets, he also referred to Zuckerberg, who claims that Facebook is making a great effort to remove "harmful" content:
"Those who follow us know that we have more than 35,000 people involved in security and that our budget for this work is billions of dollars annually. And we will continue to invest more in this area."
Dorsey, however, argued that accepting cash for political ads runs counter to efforts to address the problem of "harmful" content.
"We can't say: We work hard to stop people from spreading misleading information, BUT if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad... ok... they can say whatever they want."
Will the feud between Twitter and Facebook continue? Will Zuckerberg respond to Dorsey's accusations?
