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By: Newsdesk Team
City of London Newsroom
While Facebook recently ruled out a ban on political ads, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has announced that his network is to ban ALL political advertising worldwide from the 22nd November saying that such "reach" "should be earned not bought" Full details of the blanket veto are expected to be announced by the 15th November.
News of the ban divided US political camps for the 2020 election. Reacting to the move, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg defended his company's policy, as of course he would.
Mr Dorsey explained his position in a thread of tweets. Internet political ads, he said, presented "entirely new challenges to civic discourse".
"While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics" company CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted.
"In a democracy, I don't think it's right for private companies to censor politicians or the news," he said during a conference call with journalists.
These challenges included "machine learning-based optimisation of messaging", "micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes".
"It's not credible," he wrote, "for us to say: 'We're working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well...they can say whatever they want!'"
Countering the argument that the new policy might be seen as favouring leaders already in office, he pointed out that "many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising".
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