"We don't fact-check political ads. And we don't do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying. I know many people disagree with this, but in general, I don't think it's right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy."
Twitter, though, is not having it.
As CEO Jack Dorsey announced, starting November 22, Twitter will ban all political advertising.
Last week Dorsey tweeted a lengthy thread:
"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"A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money."
He added:
"While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions."
The company sold campaigns new targeting options and promoted hashtags ahead of the 2016 election debates.
But like Facebook, it too fell prey to the Internet Research Agency, and even attempted to sell 15% of its US elections ad inventory to the RT (Russia Today) news network.
Twitter, as we all know, is Donald Trump's favorite conduit for disseminating ad hominem attacks, mendacity, and bombast.
So naturally, he is criticizing Dorsey's decision.
Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager, tweeted:
"Twitter bans political ads in yet another attempt by the left to silence Trump and conservatives. Wouldn't be surprised if @twitter lifted the ban after 2020."
He added:
"Twitter just walked away from hundreds of millions of dollars of potential revenue, a very dumb decision for their stockholders. Will Twitter also be stopping ads from biased liberal media outlets who will now run unchecked as they buy obvious political content meant to attack Republicans? This is yet another attempt to silence conservatives, since Twitter knows President Trump has the most sophisticated online program ever known."
The answer to Pascale's question, according to Dorsey, is yes--all ads will cease, even the "biased liberal" ones.
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