Twitter will no longer welcome political ads
Twitter is all set to globally ban all political advertising! The objective here is to emphasize that the reach of the political messages needs. It to be earned instead of being bought. Commenting on this new move, Jack Dorsey, CEO, Twitter said that online advertising is very potent and works well for commercial advertisers. But this power of online advertising might have specific risks for politics.
The ban news divided America’s political camps for the 2020 elections. Brad Parscale, who is President Trump’s manager for a re-election campaign, considers the ban on an initiative to silence Trump and the conservatives by the left. On the other hand, Bill Russo, the campaign spokesperson said, that he is happy revenue didn’t win when it’s a choice between the democracy’s integrity and ad dollars. And responding to this statement or move, Mark Zuckerberg, founder, Facebook went ahead and defended his brand. He asserted that in democracy, he doesn’t feel it’s correct for the private companies to edit the news or the politicians. This ban by Twitter will be implemented from November 22nd. However, the details of the same will be released by November 15th.
Jack Dorsey’s justification for this ban
The CEO justified his views on tweets. According to him, the online political ads were a completely new challenge to the civic discourse. And this challenge comprises deep fakes, message optimizing based on machine learning, wrong information, and micro-targeting.
The data is not credible for the brand to say that they are working hard to halt people from using their system to share the wrong data. However, if someone pays Twitter or any other platform to target a section of people, they might say all that they want. Also, countering the statement that the new policy can favor leaders, he mentioned that several social movements have the potential to reach a massive scale with zero political advertising. Also, the ads that support voter registration will not get impacted by this ban.
The grey areas
Twitter till now didn’t confirm whether it will ban the issues that concentrate on ads from the media outlets. People are awaiting more details. The news companies have their presence on Twitter, and banning ads might bring about some repercussions. It will put an end for most companies for publishing their compelling stories, as we are close to the 2020 elections now. The current Twitter language borders on impartiality, which might welcome some attacks.
No one knows how much the ban will create a domino effect! Some companies can still resort to a few policies, like purchasing followers and maximize their reach. Any form of wrong information can spread through the non-promoted tweets that go viral. Also, Twitter’s ultimate objective could be to rise above Facebook and make it appear in an unprofessional light.
Dorsey had declared this news right before Facebook’s quarterly revenue. And this had opened up debates of all kinds. Now we can only wait till November 22nd to check the other crucial details of this political ad ban. The details will also have exciting insights about how it will impact the 2020 election.