Twitter is doing the right thing and putting an end to political advertising

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Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, made a statement yesterday about political ads. The statement was made, fittingly enough, in a chain of tweets detailing what kind of messages they want to send out for the already divisive 2020 election.

We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons… Dorsey said, starting his statement.

Twitter appears to be taking a new “hands-on” strategy to paid ads, as opposed to Facebook and YouTube’s “hands-off” approach to political ads. Twitter’s stance is gaining a fair share of support, and criticism, from politicians and pundits. The simplest, and most declarative, comes from Montana Governor Steve Bullock, “Good. Your move, Facebook.”

It’s a bold strategy Jack, let’s see if it pays off

Dorsey said the goal is to minimize the amount of viral content that may contain unscrupulous videos or misleading headlines. Through this, Twitter’s CEO believes that the political discourse will focus more on the issues and not on “fake news.”

A final note. This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address.

— jack (@jack) October 30, 2019

Twitter will share the finalized details on the policy on November 15 and will begin rolling out ad bans on the 22. With Facebook seemingly completely ok with politicians paying to lie to people, it’s good to see at least one social platform going in the opposite direction.

What do you think? Do you agree with Jack’s stance on political ads? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Colin Barry

I like honey roasted peanuts because they are delicious. I also like the Metal Slug games and X-Men comics because they are awesome.