In a world of fake news, out of which the majority concern politics and with the upcoming elections, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey decided that Twitter bans all political ads on the platform. He announced this via a tweet:
It is not yet clear how they will do this, but there are two specific directions they will march on: banning ads endorsing candidates or the ones that advocate for a certain position on political matters.
The process will be clarified until November 15 and will be put into practice starting November 22.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO says that “the political message reach should be earner, not bought” and that they will fight against misinformation on political matters as much as they can.
Why did Twitter take this risk?
Representatives say that the issue must be combated from its roots. This decision also comes after Facebook refused to fact-check the political news spread on their social network, even after employees have done their best in combating fake news.
Another reason for Twitter’s decision is a misinformation campaign that Trump has delivered against Joe Biden that has been spread on YouTube, Twitter and other social networks, but not on TV.
Maybe political advertising is not what drives Twitter’s major revenues and that is why they are taking this bold step at this moment. Maybe integrity is more important for Twitter representatives than the money they would earn from those political ads. Or maybe this move comes after Zuckerberg declared that they are not encouraging fake news, but if someone pays for ads on their platforms, they can say whatever they want.
Whichever the reason would be, we still think Twitter is the first social network platform that at least announced their intentions on what political ads are concerned and we hope they will succeed with their plans and we will no longer see paid misinformation in our feeds.
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