The microblogging site, Twitter, on Wednesday announced that it has banned all forms of political adverts on its platform globally.
Jack Dorsey, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, made the announcement in a tweet.
According to the company’s CEO, the decision was taken to prevent potential problems from “machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes”.
“While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics.
“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”, he tweeted.
Dorsey said the new policy bans all forms of advertisement on political issues as well as from candidates, adding that details will be unveiled next month.
Mixed reactions have trailed this announcement, particularly by members of the political elite in the United States, where the company is based.
Brad Parscale, manager of President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, said the ban was “yet another attempt by the left to silence Trump and conservatives”.
But the US President’s rival in the 2016 election, Hilary Clinton, backed the development, saying: “This is the right thing to do for democracy in America and all over the world.”
She also urged Facebook, another social media company, to adopt a similar policy.
Also, Bill Russo, spokesman for the campaign to elect Democratic front-runner Joe Biden, said: “When faced with a choice between ad dollars and the integrity of our democracy, it is encouraging that, for once, revenue did not win out.”
Twitter’s ban will be enforced from 22 November, with full details released by 15 November.
The move comes just as Facebook is under pressure to apply fact-checking to politicians running advertisements with debunked claims.
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