The past resurfaces. Around three years ago, Twitter cut off its support for political-based promotions. Now, under the leadership of Elon Musk, Twitter is reportedly going to relax its policies around political and cause-based advertising, which should re-open certain avenues for campaign promotion. This should help Twitter recoup some of the appeal that it lost in recent times with a number of its advertising partners.
The Ad Mayor
Moving forward, Twitter says that it will look to align its political ad policies with TV regulations, which do include equal-share provisions of accessibility for all candidates and the prices charged for political ads, at least in the US. Take note:
“Broadcast stations are prohibited from censoring or rejecting political ads that are paid for and sponsored by legally qualified candidates.”
This is what Twitter previously had issues with. In 2019, then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made headlines when he announced that Twitter should completely ban political ads, with Dorsey specifically noting that online political ads, which utilize machine learning-based optimization and micro-targeting, can significantly sway voter opinions, thus requiring rigorous fact-checking to avoid amplifying misleading and fallacious claims. Dorsey went on to further state that Twitter was already dealing with that kind of stuff from regular Tweets, but applying the same to paid promotions would only open up a new can of worms. In short, Dorsey cut them off.
Clearly, new Chief Twit Elon Musk doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Dorsey’s sentiments, which he’s already made clear in his various political Tweets. Musk’s ongoing investigations to uncover the corruption involved with Twitter’s past decisions, which he dubs the ‘Twitter Files’, have at least shown that political and law enforcement groups have played a part in Twitter’s past decision-making when it came to censorship and moderation. There has also been evidence showing Twitter accepting requests from The White House and The FBI, which have been rather revealing.
Musk is determined not to fall into the same trap/s, which is why it makes sense to see him reopen political advertising to all, only to then deal with whatever consequences come later on. All things considered, it can still lead to what Dorsey feared, further sowing untrust and division among Twitter’s various user groups.
The Wrap
We all know of Musk’s attraction to conspiracy theories, well, at least most of us do. Based on that, this does seem rather risky, even more so when you factor in its reduced moderation workforce resulting from excessive staff cuts and other cost-reducing methods. Either way, Twitter remains beholden to the App store and Play store rules around misinformation, so some safety fallbacks do remain in place. As with all things Twitter-related nowadays, we’ll simply have to wait and see what comes next.
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