Twitter, in a interesting move, have announced that they
will be banning all political based adverts from the site. This is coming
shortly after Facebook have come under fire for saying they would not block
political ads despite the potential of ads declaring false information.
Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, tweeted “We’ve
made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We
believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.”. This will
come into effect on the 22nd November, globally banning ads of a political
nature. This will mean Twitter will not feature ads for the UK snap 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…🧵— jack 🌍🌏🌎 (@jack) October 30, 2019
Dorsey went on to explain there reasons behind for it in a
chain of tweets, saying that the organic spread of a political message should
not be compromised by money. The current technological climate allows for
misleading and even fake information to be spread and, although, Twitter
already has rules and restrictions in place for their ads, they have perceived they
still need to take stronger actions.
This comes shortly after Facebook came under criticism for allowing
ads to be published without third party fact checking, allowing misleading and
ungrounded political targeted ads to run. Mark Zuckerberg defended this by saying his
company would prefer to "err on the side of greater expression"
as without advertising on social media platforms it could aid to the favouring of certain politicians who are heavily covered in other forms of media. Facebook
have already been criticised for allowing the Re-Elect Trump 2020 campaign to
run a video with an unproven conspiracy theory surrounding Joe Biden and his
son.
Dorsey evidently believes this stance isn’t enough, tweeting “For
instance, it’s not credible 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!“. Complete with wink face, many believe this
is a intentional dig at Facebook.
For instance, it‘s not credible 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! 😉”— jack 🌍🌏🌎 (@jack) October 30, 2019
This announcement seems to have had a widely positive reaction,
including Hilary Clinton tweeting “This is the right thing to do for democracy
in America and all over the world. What say you, Facebook?”. Following the announcement,
#BanFacebookAds was trending on Twitter. Twitter seems to be attempting to pave the way for a fairer and equal
battle for politics, BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssburg stated “ lot
of political content is produced in the hope it gets shared for free, rather
than being ever paid for.”. However, some are viewing it as an attack on
freedom of expression and unfair to censor politicians and the ads they chose
to run.
What do you think? Is Twitter correct in their attempt to make a level
playing field or should Facebook stick with their current stance. With Twitter having a
smaller number of active users, September reporting a 126 million users for
Twitter versus 1.92 billion on Facebook, will it even make a difference? Which
ever view you take, it will be interesting to see how this will change the
representation of the UK snap Election who’s social media campaigns are just
getting under way.
No comments:
Post a Comment