Adding fuel to the fire in the highly controversial debate over free speech and politics on social media, the CEO of President Donald Trump's preferred outlet says the company will no longer accept political ads. "We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought," said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in a tweetstorm Wednesday. "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 continued. The ban will go into place in November.
Twitter's recent decision differentiates itself from other companies that have resisted the push to stop taking political ads. Facebook is currently in a debate over the spread of misinformation through ads from political campaigns. The social media company has reiterated it does not think it should be the gatekeeper of political speech. Several hundred Facebook employees have noted their disagreement with the decision in a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Dorsey clarified details about Twitter's thoughts behind the decision, stating that the company "considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent. Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we're stopping these too."
Credits:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/10/30/twitter-announces-ban-political-advertisements/4101824002/
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