We have seen the intense discussion regarding how social media platforms should convey political posts and misinformation, Twitter took a big step introducing a ban that’ll focus on banning all the political posts on its platform since they want to stay away from a topic of these sorts.
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, tweeted the same recently saying they’ll be stopping all political ads on their platform all over the world since these promotions need to earned and not bought. Dorsey also said that these political messages should earn reach only when someone decides to follow an account that tweets on the same topic. Paying for these sort of messages is like forcing the people to read something they never opted for.
Since politics can affect millions of people worldwide, advertising these kinds of posts might influence votes of people which in turn can affect lots of people in future. Twitter will be posting the final policy regarding the same in the middle of the month. The remaining days should act as a notice period for all the advertisers on the platform & this rule will come into effect from 22nd November.
The effects of paid reach were seen during the 2016 campaigns for president in the United States where expert advertisers used the data collected from the social platform to deliver messages in order to influence the users who’ll vote.
Dorsey also criticized Facebook’s CEO Zuckerberg’s statement after that event:
“For instance, 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 times ahead are going to be interesting, as these political advertisers plan a new strategy after such a big change from twitter.
