Social media platform, Twitter says it will 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,” says the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey in a tweet.
Although, it’s rival, Facebook recently ruled out a ban on political ads.
The ban by Twitter will be enforced from 22 November, with full details released by 15 November.
Mr Dorsey explained his position in a thread of tweets.
Justifying the ban on Internet political ads, he said, presented “entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and 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”.
Ads in support of voter registration would not be affected by the ban, he added.
