Jack Dorsey: “We have decided to stop any political advertising on Twitter ...

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Jack Dorsey: "We have decided to stop any political advertising on Twitter globally"

Despite all its problems, Twitter was and will continue to be the informative social network par excellence . Its immediacy and ability to quickly connect users around the planet have made it an excellent platform to find out about current news, and it has also served during this time as an immense political platform.


However, Jack Dorsey , founder and CEO of the social network, wants to put an end to this, and announced that political advertising will no longer be allowed on Twitter. In his Twitter thread , Jack Dorsey commented: “ We have made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe that political message reach must be earned, not bought. Because? These are some reasons…”

Among these reasons, Dorsey commented that “a political message gains influ Email Data ence when people decide to follow an account or retweet the message. Paying for more reach eliminates that decision and forces political messages to be optimized and targeted. “We believe this decision should not be limited by money.”

No type of political advertising will be accepted on Twitter
This measure has been taken just at the moment before the United States will fully begin the next campaigns for the  presidential elections, and of course behind this decision to prohibit any political advertising on Twitter is the controversy that has been unleashed in around fake news, the manipulation of voters through social networks, such as by Donald Trump himself who in the past has complained about alleged attacks that both his party and personally have received on the bird's social network blue.


In line with these concerns, Dorsey noted that “ while Internet advertising is incredibly powerful and highly effective for commercial advertisers, that power carries significant risks for politics, where it can be used to influence votes and affect the lives of millions.” ”.

One of the examples in which social networks have managed to influence voters is the campaign in favor of Brexit, or the campaign against the peace agreement in Colombia, which have been directed to very segmented groups through social networks.

Jack Dorsey believes that the dissemination of political messages should not be conditioned by money
“ Political ads on the Internet present entirely new challenges to civic discourse : machine learning-based optimization of messages and micro-targeting, unverified misleading information, and deepfakes. All at increasing speed and with overwhelming scale and sophistication ,” Dorsey said in his message.

And he stated that “these challenges will affect ALL internet communications , not just political ads. It is better to focus our efforts on the root problems, without the additional burden and complexity that comes with taking money. Trying to fix both means fixing neither right and hurts our credibility.”

And one example Dorsey offers is that "it's not credible for us to say, 'We're working hard to prevent people from gaming our systems to spread misleading information, but if someone pays us to attack and force people to see their political ad,'" …well… They can say what they want! ”

But why stop any political advertising on Twitter? In this regard, Dorsey assured that “we considered stopping only candidate ads, but ads always have a way to circumvent this prohibition. Also, it's not fair that everyone except candidates can buy ads for issues they want to push, so we'll stop them too.”

And he added “ we are aware that we are a small part of a much larger political advertising ecosystem. Some might argue that our actions today could favor officials. But we have witnessed many social movements reach a massive scale without political publicity. I am confident this will only grow.”



Finally, Dorsey assured that “ more progressive political advertising regulation will be needed (very difficult to do). Advertising transparency requirements are making progress, but they are not enough. “The Internet offers entirely new capabilities, and regulators must think beyond the present to ensure a level playing field.”

Pressure regarding fake news and manipulation on social media grows ahead of the upcoming presidential elections in the United States
This new rule about stopping any political advertising on Twitter will be implemented by November 15 , according to Dorsey, “including some exceptions (ads supporting voter registration will still be allowed, for example). We will begin implementing our new policy on November 22 to provide current advertisers with a notice period before this change takes effect. A final note. This is not about free expression. It's about paying for reach . And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today's democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It is worth stepping back to address.”

In this regard, the director of Donald Trump's political campaign, Brand Parscale , assured that Twitter had closed the door to billions of dollars in potential income by taking this measure , and called the decision to ban any political advertising "silly." On twitter.