Twitter Will Ban All Political Advertising Starting In November

Twitter has reacted to the growing concerns of misinformation that has been widespread across social media, and therefore, it will be banning all political advertising from its website and mobile app. This move has a sharp contrast towards with Social Rival Facebook, which continues to run paid political adverts, including false one, as Facebook calls it "a free speech priority".

Jack Dorsey, CEO/President of Twitter, said, "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,", which was sent in a series of tweets about the new policy.

Facebook drew criticism when it said in September that it will no longer fact-check adverts by politicians or their campaigns, as it could allow them to "lie freely" CEO/President Mark Zuckerberg of the rival network had told Congress in October that politicians have their right with Free Speech on Facebook.

Zuckerberg didn't waste anytime as he responded directly to Twitter's move, just after the tweets were made. During Facebook's monthly earnings conference call, which began just a half an hour after Dorsey tweeted, Zuckerberg gave a impassioniate monologue about the company's belief "that political speech is very important."

Zuckerberg did stand by the company's decision to run unchecked political adverts and had denied that the choice was financially motivated, saying that such ads make up only less than half of a single percent of Facebook's entire revenue.

Facebook had also received a $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for it's privacy violations which was more than 10 times than what Facebook makes from political ads, Zuckerberg said.

"This is complex stuff. Anyone who says the answer is simple hasn't thought about the nuances and downstream challenges," Zuckerberg said. "I don't think anyone can say that we are not doing what we believe or we haven't thought hard about these issues." he also added.

Google, on the other hand, never given any comment or thought on Twitter's ad-policy change.

Trump's advertising campaign had called  the change "a very dumb decision", which was issued in a White House statement earlier today.

Joe Biden said that it was "very unfortunate" that companies like Twitter and Facebook would think they're option was just to completely ban political ads altogether.

Political advertising makes a small amount of Twitter's revenue. However, the company does not break their specific figure every quarter, but had reported that political advert spending for the 2018 midterm elections was less than $3 million. It had reported $824 million in third-quarter revenue of that year.

But most candidates tend to spend more on buying ads on Facebook, compared to Twitter, as shown in Company Records.

This issue eventually had risen when Twitter, Facebook and Google refused to remove a unleading video ad from President Trump's campaign, which had directly targeted Biden.

As a response, Dem. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another hopeful for President, had run her own ad on Facebook which had taken aim at Mark Zuckerberg. The ad had falsely claimed that Zuckerberg had endorsed Trump for re-election, which had acknowledged the falsehood as necessary as it was to even make a point.

Critics have decided to call on Facebook to ban all political ads as Twitter is doing. Some include the CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who had called the company's ad-policy of allowing such lies "absolutely ludicrous" and had advised that the social media giant to sit out the 2020 presidential election until it can figure out something even better.

Twitter had said in June that any political figures and world leaders who tweet abusive or threatening messages will get slapped with a warning labels, but the tweets could still be viewable. But Twitter has not yet enforced this label.

Federal campaigns are set to spend the majority of it's advertising money primarily on broadcast and cable networks during the 2020 presidential election, according to advertising research firm Kantar, and about 20% of the total $6 billion in spending on digital ads (about $1.2 billion).

Twitter's ad-policy is scheduled to start on November 22.