General News of Thursday, 31 October 2019
Source: bbc.com
Twitter is to ban all political advertising worldwide, saying that the reach of such messages "should be earned, not bought".
"While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics," company CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted.
Social media rival Facebook recently ruled out a ban on political ads.
News of the ban divided America's political camps for the 2020 election.
Brad Parscale, manager of President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, said the ban was "yet another attempt by the left to silence Trump and conservatives".
But Bill Russo, spokesman for the campaign to elect Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, said: "When faced with a choice between ad dollars and the integrity of our democracy, it is encouraging that, for once, revenue did not win out."
Reacting to the move, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg defended his company's policy.
"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.
Twitter's ban will be enforced from 22 November, with full details released by 15 November.
How does Dorsey justify the ban?
Mr Dorsey explained his position in a thread of tweets.
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
This is the right thing to do for democracy in America and all over the world.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 30, 2019
What say you, @Facebook? https://t.co/dRgipKHzUG
My main concern with micro-targeted ads on SM during elections is that it means you can tell thousands of different stories to different groups without the other groups hearing what you're saying.
— Carl Miller (@carljackmiller) October 30, 2019
The potential for duplicity (or uber-multiplicity) is just enormous
This is really interesting and worth noting, but a lot of political content is produced in the hope it gets shared for free, rather than being ever paid for https://t.co/jC2Kx0pmAf
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) October 30, 2019