Twitter Will No Longer Accept Political Advertising

Twitter Inc TWTR CEO Jack Dorsey announced in a series of tweets Wednesday that the platform will "stop all political advertising on Twitter globally."

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

He cited politicians "paying for reach" as the motivating factor behind the decision and that political speech should be "earned."

The move comes weeks after Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren intentionally ran fake ads on Facebook Inc FB. "Facebook's willingness to run the ad, she said, shows how the company prioritizes profits over protecting democracy," CNN said.

Twitter's decision will be fully revealed on Nov. 15 and will go into effect on Nov. 22. Read the entire thread below.

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.

— jack (@jack) October 30, 2019

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.

— jack (@jack) October 30, 2019

These challenges will affect ALL internet communication, not just political ads. Best to focus our efforts on the root problems, without the additional burden and complexity taking money brings. Trying to fix both means fixing neither well, and harms our credibility.

— jack (@jack) October 30, 2019

We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent. Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we're stopping these too.

— jack (@jack) October 30, 2019

In addition, we need more forward-looking political ad regulation (very difficult to do). Ad transparency requirements are progress, but not enough. The internet provides entirely new capabilities, and regulators need to think past the present day to ensure a level playing field.

— jack (@jack) October 30, 2019

We’ll share the final policy by 11/15, including a few exceptions (ads in support of voter registration will still be allowed, for instance). We’ll start enforcing our new policy on 11/22 to provide current advertisers a notice period before this change goes into effect.

— jack (@jack) October 30, 2019

A final note. This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address.

— jack (@jack) October 30, 2019