Twitter will ban political advertising on its platform next month, the company's chief executive said on Thursday, as social media platforms face pressure to block attempts to steer elections with false information.
"We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally," said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a statement. "We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought."
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Dorsey posted a full Twitter thread on Thursday, saying: "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."
"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!" the Twitter head said with a wink emoji included. Many users commented that it sounded like a dig at Facebook.
Social media companies, including Twitter rival Facebook face growing pressure to stop selling ads that spread inaccurate information.
Facebook has pledged efforts to deal with misinformation on its platform after Russian propaganda on that platform before the 2016 US presidential election was seen to affect the outcome of that race, which was won by Donald Trump.
But Facebook made a decision to not fact-check ads run by politicians, drawing ire from Democratic candidates running in the 2020 presidential election such as former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Earlier this month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company's policy, saying it did not want to stifle political speech.
Twitter's ban takes effect starting November 22.
Reuters