Jack Dorsey says Twitter will ban all political ads

Twitter is planning to ban political ads from its service globally, the company announced Wednesday via a series of tweets from its CEO Jack Dorsey. The ban will go into effect Nov. 22.

Dorsey said the ban will cover ads about specific candidates and issues the broadest possible ban. Some ads will be allowed to remain, including those encouraging people to vote. According to a Twitter spokesperson, news organizations are currently exempt from its rules on political advertising, and the company will release full details on exemptions next month.

This is a major shift in policy for Twitter. Ahead of the 2016 election, the company sold new targeting options to campaigns and promoted hashtags ahead of the debates. But during the campaign, Twitter was beset by a misinformation campaign coordinated by a Kremlin-linked troll farm and even tried to sell Russia Today 15% of its US elections ad inventory. The company does not want a repeat this year.

Twitter’s move comes as
Facebook has faced heavy criticism for political ads, which permits candidates
to lie according to a policy the company clarified earlier this month. CEO Mark
Zuckerberg and his executives have defended this move by saying that they do
not want the company to be arbiter of truth, and instead will allow the public
and media to assess the truth of claims.

He also poked at Facebook’s
argument that banning tweets will favor incumbents, giving challengers less
voice. “Some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents,” Dorsey
said. “But we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without
any political advertising. I trust this will only grow.”

Dorsey’s swipe follows months
in which Facebook has used Twitter as its own talking point piñata. Since the
beginning of the year, Zuckerberg has highlighted his own company’s commitment
to trust and content moderation by stating that it spends more on safety than
Twitter’s whole annual revenue. That repeated talking point has rankled some
officials at the Dorsey-led company, according to sources close to the company.

Facebook’s policy has also tied
the company in knots, leading to challenges from critics, including activist
Adriel Hampton, who registered as a California gubernatorial candidate just so
he could run false ads. On Tuesday, the company banned his ads on the grounds
that he only registered to run so he could circumvent their policies. Hampton
is now exploring legal options to challenge the social network’s decision.

Zuckerberg responded to
Twitter’s move on a call with investors Wednesday. “Although I’ve
considered whether we should not carry these ads in the past, and I’ll continue
to do so, on balance so far I’ve thought that we should continue,”
Zuckerberg said. “Would we really want to block ads for important
political issues like climate change or women’s empowerment?”

Politicians across the spectrum
also responded to Twitter’s decision. “This is the right thing to do for
democracy in America and all over the world,” Hillary Clinton tweeted.
“What say you, @facebook?” Brad Parscale, the Trump 2020 campaign
manager, called the move “yet another attempt to silence
conservatives.”

Twitter is not the first social
network to ban political ads. In early October, Chinese-owned TikTok said it
would not allow political ads on the video meme platform, stating that it does
not fit the network’s experience. Pinterest also bans most ads around political
campaigning.

A Twitter spokesperson declined
to say how much the company earns from political ads, only noting that it’s a
small percentage of its overall revenue base.

According to Dorsey, the
company will publish a policy on the change Nov. 15, which will go into effect
on Nov. 22. Twitter’s announcement, made right as Facebook released its
third-quarter earnings, puts even more pressure on the social giant to explain
its often-confusing political advertising policies.