Elon Musk's X Revives Political Ads, Rattles 2024 Election Landscape

X (formerly Twitter) is bringing back political ads and expanding its team ahead of the 2024 presidential election. 

What To Know: In a new blog post from the X Safety team, the social platform company said it's looking to add people to its safety and elections team ahead of the election in order to focus on stopping manipulation, exposing fake accounts and monitoring threats. 

X noted that it's guided by its Civic Integrity Policy during elections, which provides an extra layer of protection around election periods. The company is revising its policy to reflect its updated enforcement policy: Freedom of Speech, Not Reach. X aims to strike a balance between "tackling the most harmful types of content" and "not censoring political debate." 

In order to do so, the company will add public labels to posts that are flagged for potential violations of its policies and make people aware when reach is restricted. 

"Building on our commitment to free expression, we are also going to allow political advertising," X said in the blog post. 

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However, paid political ads will have to undergo a screening process to make sure the promoter is eligible and isn't attempting to promote false or misleading content. X also plans to create a global ad transparency center where everyone can review political ads being circulated.

Meta Platforms Inc META also has a transparency center, in which the company provides similar guidelines. Other social media companies represented in the Global X Social Media ETF SOCL have similar policies. Twitter previously banned political ads on the platform in 2019. 

"Our work is ongoing. These increased investments in people, policy and product will further ensure our communities have access to open, accurate and safe political discourse on X," the company said. 

Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion last October and rebranded the company to X. The social media platform has gone through a number of changes in a little less than a year as it continues to work towards becoming an "everything app."

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