Twitter lifts ban on political ads. Is this also the return of deep fakes, misinformation?
- Elon Musk's Twitter on Tuesday tweeted that it would relax its advertising policy for ‘cause-based ads’ in the United States and align its ad policy with TV and other media outlets
Elon Musk's Twitter on Wednesday informed that they are reversing the ban on political advertisements on the micro-blogging platform. The lifting of the ban imposed in 2019 by co-founder Jack Dorsey aims to contribute to the company's revenue.
It is reported that, since Elon musk took over Twitter in October 2022, corporate advertisers have fled the platform. Wary of Tesla CEO Elon Musk's rampant layoffs, reversing the permanent suspension of former US President Donald Trump and hurried launch and subsequent temporary suspension of paid verification feature led to several impersonators getting verified on the platform, advertisers have fled the platform.
A look at Twitter's announcement
Elon Musk's Twitter on Tuesday tweeted that it would relax its advertising policy for "cause-based ads" in the United States and align its ad policy with TV and other media outlets. "We believe that cause-based advertising can facilitate a public conversation around important topics," the social media company tweeted.
The move will bring Twitter to par with Meta's social media platform Facebook and Alphabet Inc's YouTube. The only platform that still holds a ban on political advertisements is China's TikTok.
Why were political ads banned on Twitter in 2019?
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey had taken the decision to ban political advertisements on Twitter following the backlash it received during the 2019 elections. Deep fakes and misinformation through advertisements spread more rapidly on Twitter than news, according to an article on the journal ‘Science’.
“Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale." —Former CEO Jack Dorsey had said.
Dorsey had banned both candidate-based ads as well as issue-based ads, barring a few exceptions like voter registration campaigns.
"We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought," tweeted Jack Dorsey, Twitter's then-chief executive, while announcing the move.