
Twitter to ban political advertising - coloneltcb
https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952
======
moksly
In Denmark we have laws in place that hold news paper editors responsible for
printing truth. They don’t always succeed, but they try to, and when they do
fail they admit it and apologise.

This is what has kept our society well informed and critical thinking for a
hundred years. It’s also allowed for different sides of things, because you
can interpret things like socioeconomic statistics and facts differently and
write about them as such, but you can’t make up things.

This died with Facebook, YouTube and the non-editorial entertainment “news”
and as a result we have anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers and what not.

I have no idea how to regulate it though, but I think we need to do something.

~~~
ralusek
The lowest level of truth telling is stating facts, but even stating facts can
be extremely manipulative.

If I were to say:

"2x as many white Americans were killed by police as black Americans in 2018."

This a true fact.

If I take note of the fact that black Americans only constitute 13% of the
population, then I can say

"A black American is 2.3x as likely as a white American to be killed by
police."

This is also a true fact.

So not only are facts capable of telling a narrative, but it gets much more
complicated once you start introducing conclusions.

If you say "A black person is 2.3x as likely as a white person to be killed by
police in America. American police are being racially discriminatory when
killing civilians."

This is a fact and a conclusion, and _most_ news consists of facts and
conclusions. Both the fact and the conclusion serve a particular narrative,
and that's an issue. The problem is that a news organization with a different
set of objectives, or simply operating under a different framework, would be
entirely capable of coming to an entirely different conclusion, or introduce
entirely different facts alongside it.

"A black person is 2.3x as likely as a white person to be killed by police in
America. However, despite making up only 13% of the population, black
Americans committed 36% of homicides, with an overall much higher
representation in violent crime across the board. Only 5% of police shootings
are with an unarmed victim, with the rest resulting from an armed
altercation."

Different narrative.

In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than
an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things
easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity
doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is
meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is
precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those decisions. And to
be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that.

~~~
akie
> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous
> than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make
> things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the
> entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in
> America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in
> power is precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those
> decisions. And to be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that.

This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. You philosophize on basis of the
assumption that central authorities ('government') by definition cannot be
trusted, and we should therefore be wary of anything that reeks of centralized
decision making.

That is a supremely American way of looking at the world.

Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the
checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up
with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken
all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most
outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him
nevertheless because of large scale & organized disinformation campaigns by
the likes of (decentralized) propaganda entities like Fox News.

How does your system deal with that then? Not very well, it seems.

Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can
say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies, we're going to forbid it
and if you keep in doing it you'll be slapped with a fine that really hurts
and your CEO might have to go to jail"?

What you don't seem to take into account in your comment is that centralized
bodies can protect the weak from the powerful. If you only have decentralized
entities, it's survival of the fittest – which is a nice way of saying that
the weakest get eaten or die. I don't want to live in a society that has these
values.

~~~
chr1
Why do you think the centralized body would say that to fox and not to cnn?
After all if there are about 50% people thinking that fox spreads lies and 50%
people thinking cnn spreads lies the decision of centralized body could go any
way.

It is better to let everyone speak and everyone to make their own decisions

~~~
navigatesol
One of the great ironies of the state of media in America: almost everyone
agrees that Fox News is extermely biased and sometimes dishonest. Yet CNN,
ABC, CBS, NYT and MSNBC are bastions of truth.

I mean, just a few weeks ago ABC posted a video from a Kentucky range and
claimed it was fighting in Syria[0]. Is that simply horrible journalism, or a
lie?

[0] [https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/media/abc-news-error-
video/in...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/media/abc-news-error-
video/index.html)

~~~
galangalalgol
I think you may be in an echo chamber. Most of my coworkers watch fox news.
Its even playing on tvs at work in the hallways and cafeteria. People chat
about their latest dose of truth and the outrageous lies of cnn etc. I listen
to npr on the way home to get the sam facts in a different light/bias and then
resolve to ignore everything but local races. I wish high offices were still
elected by lower offices down to the lowest of offices where all the voters
actually know the people they are choosing between.

~~~
pattrn
Not sure if you're referencing the constitution's original intent for state
legislatures to elect senators. If you are, here's a good reference for anyone
interested in the topic:

[https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing...](https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Direct_Election_Senators.htm)

------
SirensOfTitan
From what I recall Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez questioned Zuckerberg, she
questioned along the anecdote of:

If I purchase ads on Facebook saying Republicans support the Green New Deal
(but they don't), will Facebook take the ads down?

I often see these clean, easily provable anecdotes from those who support some
kind of suppression of speech. I worry though: often the truthfulness of real
world statements are difficult to determine. Even when truth is easy to
determine, there are few arbiters of information that everyone alongside the
aisle trust. As a result, no matter how easy or difficult truth is to find,
without trust no one will believe the truth even if they hear it clearly.

I find political speech pervasive, and believe that almost everything a person
says or does has some political element. Determining the periphery of
political speech,as a result, would be inherently political.

~~~
octonion
Are political propaganda and deliberate lies the type of speech the Founding
Fathers were trying to protect?

~~~
harryh
The issue is who gets to be the arbiter of what counts as "political
propaganda and deliberate lies"?

The founding fathers thought that if government was given such power it would
be abused to stifle speech that fell outside of those categories so the only
way to protect speech was to protect it all.

I tend to think that if this is true for government, it's probably true for
large corporations as well.

~~~
rapind
I think the issue is whether it still qualifies as free speech when it's paid
advertisement. Inevitably the companies with the largest coffers and most to
gain get a megaphone and you end up with tiers of free speech (pay to be
heard).

~~~
131012
And they are not banning political tweets...

------
nlh
Bravo. That whole thread is smart, well-reasoned, and puts democracy above
profits. Good for them.

I particularly like his last point:

> A final note. This isn’t about free expression. This is 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’s worth stepping back in order to address.

Which I cannot read in any way but “f-you, Facebook.”

And honestly, he’s totally right. This issue is NOT about freedom of
expression...it’s about freedom to pay for expression (and freedom to pay for
having others see your expression), and I don’t think that’s inherently a good
thing. It’s certainly not what the first amendment is about.

~~~
buboard
> Which I cannot read in any way but “f-you, Facebook.”

He was even more explicit:

> For instance, it‘s not credible for us to say: “We’re working hard to stop
> people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone
> pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well...they can
> say whatever they want! ”

~~~
Consultant32452
I'm skeptical of this. Is a private charity promoting an LGBT fundraiser a
political ad? What about Fox News pushing an ad about how other news is fake.
Or MSNBC pushing an ad about Russia collusion? Was the now infamous Gillette
woke ad political? It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

~~~
ben509
Yeah, "political" is a weasel word like "extremist." A view I like isn't
political, it's just common sense or settled science, it's the other guy's
views that are "political."

~~~
smadurange
That's so nicely put.

------
slg
One of the key aspects of political content on social media is that you don't
necessarily need to buy ads to get your message in front of people. You can
instead pay for an army of bots to spread your message and make it appear as
genuine user generated content rather than a prepackaged advertisement. So
while this decision by Twitter is in my opinion good, what are they doing to
cut down on inauthentic political engagement that has become a hallmark of the
platform?

~~~
busterarm
You can also get an army of real actual people to spread your message and the
company can just ban them and accuse them of being bots or having ties to some
government without actual evidence.

~~~
tyre
Your comment is written in a way that implies that this happens. Do you have
evidence to back that up? Not evidence that they take down suspected state-
sponsored brigading, but that they were wrong?

~~~
ambicapter
> You comment is written in a way that implies that this happens.

I think his comment his written to imply that it is possible for this to
happen. In which case, it does not require supporting evidence beyond the
logical consistency of itself, which is sound, I believe.

~~~
syrrim
busterarm is almost certainly referring to chinese "bots".

~~~
busterarm
That's also an interesting phenomenon. There are a large number of Chinese
citizens on the internet who will shout down with comments any message counter
to the party line there.

They are real people, aren't they?

~~~
mbesto
This dilemma right here is exactly why modern communication platforms are so
dangerous.

~~~
erichocean
> dangerous

to who?

~~~
Clubber
>dangerous ... to who?

The entrenched who already have a mass information platform available to them
(news).

------
duxup
Is this when we now start to wonder what will count as a political ad?

Social movements that have a political connection / associated with a
particular party or candidate?

~~~
jld
Major League Soccer is going through this problem now. They prohibit political
displays in stadium but are now in the business of deciding whether signs that
say things like "anti-racist" or "anti-fascist" or "end gun violence" are
political or not, and all of the worms that come out of that can.

[https://deadspin.com/by-banning-protest-signs-mls-is-
trying-...](https://deadspin.com/by-banning-protest-signs-mls-is-trying-to-
lobotomize-t-1837410237)

~~~
colechristensen
I wouldn't have a problem with expanding that to include social issues. You
bought a ticket to see a game, not a billboard.

This is a problem I have with modern social movements, when they fail to get
audiences in public spaces they seek out captive audiences or to be disruptive
as possible to completely unrelated places. Hold your rally in a park or march
down main street or a pedestrian way or in front of some place you're
protesting. Stop walking down highways and forcing your messages in places
which have nothing to do with your cause.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> You bought a ticket to see a game, not a billboard.

Absolutely. So let's get rid of advertising at games. Not just political
advertising; _all_ advertising. No Democratic or Republican ads, but also no
Toyota or Chrysler ads, no Coors or Bud Light ads. Unfortunately, there's too
much money at stake for that to ever happen.

But political ads _are_ different. I don't think Coors drinkers get offended
when they see a Bud Light ad.

~~~
inscionent
MLS teams are walking billboards. Ads subsidize the world, especially live
sports events. Enjoy your 2000% base ticket price increases.

~~~
brlewis
Are the base ticket prices based on cost, or on supply and demand?

~~~
Mirioron
Does it matter? The point isn't that tickets will become unaffordable, the
point is that the sports leagues themselves will disappear.

Sports isn't something people _need_. Some sports leagues cost a lot of
resources to run. If these sports leagues become less profitable, then some of
the investment will move into other entertainment and your sports professional
league will slowly disappear.

~~~
radiator
How big of a problem would it be, if the professional sports leagues were to
disappear? There are probably many opinions on the matter.

But I agree, without advertisements, professional sports would not survive, so
it's not going to happen.

~~~
Mirioron
I don't think that the impact of less professional sports on a societal level
will be very significant, but if the reason to get rid of ads at sporting
events is to make them better, then it's (probably) counterproductive to take
steps that kill off a large portion of those events.

------
tasty_freeze
Whenever these topics come up, the comment section is full of people
advocating for no limits based solely on slipper slope arguments: who is going
to determine what is politcal? Who is going to determine what is true?

But we all life with boundaries and we cope just fine. Why should this street
in front of my house have a 35 MPH speed limit? What is special about 35? Why
not 36? Why not 34? Who is to say that one is better than the other, so let's
not try and all and let everyone pick their own speed.

Just as it would be possible, but stupid, to invoke slippery slopes to argue
there should be no speed limits, invoking slippery slopes to argue against any
regulation is a cop-out. Why not advance a real argument vs just arguing
picking the optimal boundary is impossible?

~~~
Barrin92
yep, the whole "who decides on the truth?" thing is extremely irritating. Do
we throw out every court case now because apparently it's impossible to
determine what is fact and what is fiction, or to establish common rules or
guidelines for conduct? We've been doing nothing else for thousands of years.

~~~
ben509
A basic legal doctrine is that "it's better ten guilty men go free than one
innocent man be unjustly imprisoned."

If anything, prosecutors have been taking your attitude and gaming the system
with plea deals, so you're not merely wrong, but horribly wrong.

~~~
noelsusman
Treating everything as if the consequence of getting it wrong is sending an
innocent person to prison doesn't make any sense. Courts don't even do that.
They use different standards when imprisonment isn't an option.

------
dmix
One thing about the first amendment is that it doesn't have conditions. This
type of thing that Twitter is doing will be full of them, ie selectively
defining what's political or not.

The question is whether this is a lesser evil than allowing political ads but
selectively blocking stuff with very broad and potentially inconsistent
moderation rules. I personally think totally blocking is the easier of the two
in terms of decision making but I expect this will generate far more false
positives in the end on the fringes and grey areas.

It's a good thing we'll now have two different experiments, on a large scale,
to see which one is more self-destructive.

One of the main problems that I see is the outsized influence we've given to
the very-vocal but small parties on social media to have on silencing other
people and groups, going well beyond the limited free speech exceptions we
previously observed in society for over a century (culturally, not just
legally). Neither of these approaches really addresses that problem at
FB/Twitter. Which is why I'm curious which one is going to expand those grey
areas, where the abuse/downside risk remains, rather than reducing it.

~~~
octonion
The First Amendment is about _government_ suppression of speech. Furthermore,
deliberate lies are (legally) not legitimate speech.

~~~
vonmoltke
> Furthermore, deliberate lies are (legally) not legitimate speech.

That is not correct:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/does-
th...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/does-the-first-
amendment-protect-deliberate-lies/496004/)

> Under U.S. law, many falsehoods—even some deliberate lies—receive the full
> protection of the First Amendment. That is true even though “there is no
> constitutional value in false statements of fact,” as Justice Lewis Powell
> Jr. wrote for the Supreme Court in 1974. Nonetheless, the Court has often
> refused to allow government to penalize speakers for mistakes, sloppy
> falsehoods, and lies. Political lies are strongly protected; but even
> private lies sometimes are as well.

~~~
JulianMorrison
That needs amending, IMO.

~~~
StreamBright
And who is going to decide what is the truth? Ministry of truth?

~~~
belltaco
See other countries where there are stricter rules, UK for example.

The judicial and court system are already tasked with finding truths, how is
that not "the ministry of Truth" ?

~~~
makomk
The UK is infamous for its ruinous libel lawsuits against people who dare to
say true things about the rich and powerful. It was so widely abused that the
US ended up having to introduce a law blocking our libel suits fronm being
enforced over there.

------
lpolovets
I'm still not sure what I think about the ban, but one potential downside is
it will give people with lots of organic reach, like celebrities and
incumbents, a big advantage. Before you could use organic reach to combat paid
reach and vice versa, but now organic reach is the only thing that counts. For
example, if The Rock runs for governor of California next year, it will be
very hard for his opponents to compete (at least on Twitter, and on any other
platforms that follow this policy).

~~~
joshred
Isn't organic reach a little more meritocratic than just throwing money into
paid ads?

~~~
vowelless
The effect of "meritocracy", at least in this context, is not linear. Every
incremental unit of influence or fame (followers, impressions, etc) leads to
super-linear influence between some interval (probably tapers off at the
tail).

And it is not independent / non-zero sum. If "A" gets more influence, it may
take from "B"'s opportunity. And if the growth function is indeed super-
linear, then B's opportunity is very quickly squashed.

------
Aperocky
Freedom of expression inherently includes the freedom to pay for expression.

What are your expression worth if you wouldn’t be able to pay a service,
cellphone/internet connection/reddit gold to express that? How is paying ads
different than paying a campaigner set up a loudspeaker in the middle of a
city?

But then again, since twitter is a private enterprise, I fully respect their
right to act on their own platform.

~~~
asdf333
freedom of expression is different from freedom to pay to amplify the
expression.

~~~
asxd
I don’t think the age of their account should be a factor in the validity of
their arguments.

It would be one thing if our rights were restricted so that we could never pay
for reach of expression. That seems like it would be a violation of free
speech. But in this case (as noted) it’s a private entity enforcing their own
legitimate policy exclusively on their own platform.

------
blotter_paper
I don't agree with every call Twitter makes, but I find Dorsey to be by far
the most interesting public figure in the social media game. His two JRE
interviews[0][1] and his Tales from the Crypto interview[2] are all worth
checking out, IMO. He seems to think Twitter should use a blockchain in the
future, and that small social circles should have a system for internally
moderating content without needing it to be okay by Twitter's standards, but
obviously they're still currently taking down content that breaches their
policies in $CURRENT_YEAR. I'm really interested in seeing where Twitter goes,
I think Dorsey plays realpolitik sometimes but I don't think he has the same
goals as Zuckerberg. I could be wrong, and Dorsey could just be a next-level
showman, but I'm hopeful that he might do something truly interesting with the
platform. I've still never made a Twitter account.

[0]: [https://youtu.be/_mP9OmOFxc4a](https://youtu.be/_mP9OmOFxc4a)

[1]: [https://youtu.be/DZCBRHOg3PQ](https://youtu.be/DZCBRHOg3PQ)

[2]: [https://talesfromthecrypt.libsyn.com/tales-from-the-
crypt-61...](https://talesfromthecrypt.libsyn.com/tales-from-the-
crypt-61-jack-dorsey)

~~~
buboard
Dorsey espouses some very libertarian views and yet he's generally leaning
left of course. Still , he s the only one who dares give Trump a megaphone. I
think he handles the whole situation exceptionally well.

~~~
briandear
However shouldn’t the president have a “megaphone?” In the old days, when a
president spoke, the media would “interpret” what he said. Politicians being
able to speak directly to the population is a good thing.

~~~
jimkleiber
I like that politicians can speak directly to the media—I just wish orgs like
Twitter would apply their rules and guidelines fairly to everyone.

I'm starting to see these "rules" more like "laws," and starting to look more
closely at how some of these platforms are governed in the same way I look at
how governments are governed:

\- Who makes the laws? \- How does one become a lawmaker? \- How long can one
be a lawmaker? \- Who enforces the laws? \- How strong is the rule of law? \-
What are the consequences of breaking a law? \- etc etc.

How does this analogy sit with you?

------
tyre
Good for them, and good for us. Without controlling bots and sockpuppets, it's
not a total fix. Still, a step in the right direction.

Given the larger overlap between Facebook users and people who vote, we'll
need follow-up from Zuckerberg to really make this stick. Step in the right
direction.

~~~
lonelappde
Twitter has been famously hugely toxic to humanity and democracy for years,
and that was strictly on the non-ads side of content, and Dorsey has refused
to do anything about it because he craves those engagement numbers. Paid ads
are a sideshow distraction.

------
crazygringo
Wow. That's gotta be a lot of money they're leaving on the table, no?

I totally support it. But I've also got to be brutally honest: I wonder if
this is a sincere moral stance on Dorsey's part, or more of a business
calculation that, leading up to the lightning-rod 2020 election, accepting
political ads ultimately has the potential to do more damage to Twitter's
reputation than the money would make up for -- or have them wind up being on
the wrong side of, and in the subsequent targets of, whoever does win.

But I wouldn't be surprised if it's happily both.

~~~
qnsi
For FB political ads make about 1% of revenue, if I am calculating correctly
(source [https://articles2.marketrealist.com/2019/05/why-facebook-
con...](https://articles2.marketrealist.com/2019/05/why-facebook-considered-
ditching-political-advertising/))

I know you asked for Twitter but I guess it's similar. Zuckerberg also
considered dropping political ads altogether, as they are controversial

~~~
dopamean
I think Zuckerberg actually stated this recently somewhere. That political ads
may not even reach 1% of revenue.

------
product50
So why not use the same methodology on TV or print as well and ban political
ads across? Why is social media singled out here? What about ads on YouTube?
This is nothing but a copout solution. Twitter doesn't have the will nor the
capital to be part of the debate here (and political ads are likely too small
for them to care) - so they are trying to gain strategy credit by just saying
this is a bad idea.

NYTimes is happy to take money for political ads while they are shouting that
FB and Twitter should do fact checks.

~~~
afarrell
> This is nothing but a copout solution.

 _Who 's_ solution is a copout?

You're saying that it is inconsistent for Twitter to not accept payment for
political ads, but a print newspaper to do so. This is correct. But that
inconsistency reflects the fact that the decisions are being made by
_different_ people.

What would be a non-copout solution that twitter could implement?

~~~
product50
Twitter can just follow Facebook here and let public/journalists evaluate the
truthfulness of the campaigns vs. doing it themselves (as that is open to
interpretation). If print media and TV channels can do that, why can't social
media?

------
yters
What defines a political ad? For example are prolife ads political, even if
they mention no laws or politics? What about ads that do not mention politics
but are targeted to influence policy? Seems like an ambiguous category except
for outright promoting particular candidates and laws.

~~~
exergy
This level of pedantry drives me up the wall. Not everything needs to be
invented from first principles.

Profile ads are banned, yes, because they involve teh candidates. Policy ads
are banned because they again involve politics.

We can start _anywhere_! Let's say 'nothing from any entity that receives
money from a political party'. Or 'anything mentioning election candidates'.
Or 'anything with certain keywords in it'.

What you're not stopping to ask yourself is 'who are the kinds of people that
need to advertise about politics'? Yep, exactly the kinds of dickheads you
don't want polluting our information streams with their bullshit. Out with all
of them!

~~~
hailwren
It's not pedantry at all. Look at F1's battle with cigarette advertising for a
concrete example. Certainly, explicit advertising is easy to stop, but there
are many ways of advertising things surreptitiously.

A great example of this is Ferrari's evolution to avoid the F1 cigarette ban.
They started with the word Marlboro on the side of their car, then they moved
to a barcode that resembled a pack of cigarettes, and now they are partnered
with a front company called Mission Winnow (google it, it's really
interesting) that is widely believed to be subliminal advertising for
Marlboro.

~~~
pm90
What point are you trying to make? The system seems working as intended if
Ferrari is going to such great lengths to avoid explicit advertisement.

There will always be those who break laws, doesn’t mean that we should stop
making laws.

~~~
hailwren
The point is that this is a policy that is hard to enforce because it is
ambiguous. The system worked as intended if you think that the point was to
make only the most well-financed and technically savvy advertisers able to
receive a benefit.

Laws don't have anything to do with this thread?

~~~
pm90
> as intended if you think that the point was to make only the most well-
> financed and technically savvy advertisers able to receive a benefit.

Your argument is that breaking a law is expensive and only those with money
can break it so why bother with laws. Beyond ridiculous.

The example you’re using is also not convincing. Statistically insignificant
amount of people know or care enough to watch F1 races.

~~~
hailwren
> The example you’re using is also not convincing. Statistically insignificant
> amount of people know or care enough to watch F1 races.

We have 1 user on the internet vs $1 Billion in advertising budget. I'm going
to trust that Philip Morris is better at quantifying the effect here.

> Your argument is that breaking a law is expensive and only those with money
> can break it so why bother with laws. Beyond ridiculous.

This still has nothing to do with laws. It's an important distinction to make
between laws and corporate policy because one carries very high punishments
whilst the other is mostly without recourse.

My argument is in no way proscriptive. Only descriptive.

~~~
pm90
The example that you used was specifically in the context of corporations
getting around anti-tobacco _laws_. Not corporate policy against tobacco
advertisement, but _laws_. I stand by my assessment that its a bad example to
make the point you're trying to make.

> It's an important distinction to make between laws and corporate policy
> because one carries very high punishments whilst the other is mostly without
> recourse.

I agree with this.

~~~
hailwren
> The example that you used was specifically in the context of corporations
> getting around anti-tobacco laws. Not corporate policy against tobacco
> advertisement, but laws. I stand by my assessment that its a bad example to
> make the point you're trying to make.

This is mostly incorrect. There are _some_ countries where tobacco advertising
laws are the reason for Formula 1's tobacco advertising ban, but the rule
being circumvented is FIA's tobacco ban. Interestingly, in countries where
tobacco advertising is illegal, Ferrari often changes their livery to not
include Mission Winnow.

------
shadowgovt
Their heart's in the right place, but mechanically, doesn't this shift the
money from "pay for an ad on Twitter" to "pay for a bot farm / human clickfarm
to like and reshare the tweet?"

Twitter's engagement model (popularity ∝ importance) is still flawed in
gameable ways, and political operations have the money to pay to play those
games.

~~~
twoodfin
Agree, but at least now the “game” has viewpoint-neutral rules.

------
moltensodium
Jack's last tweet in this thread:

>paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant
ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to
handle

Ignoring the technology aspects of this for a minute: he's basically arguing
directly against the Supreme Court's Citizen's United ruling, which I find
interesting. If we're going to argue that money is too corrupting in online
political advertising then it really doesn't have anything to do with being
online.

------
justapassenger
Quote from Jack

> We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.

Will they also ban politicians? Accounts buy followers to grow and look legit,
including politicians. Just removing ads isn't removing power of money, as
people are (and will be) spending a lot of money to get organic reach.

Some of their most popular accounts are politicians accounts. That brings tons
of traffic to Twitter and makes money for them.

While I don't disagree with their decision, I think they maybe overstating
positive impact it'll have.

~~~
mandeepj
> Will they also ban politicians?

I don't think they will. 'Politicians ban' will be equivalent to banning free
expression, and twitter is against that.

~~~
justapassenger
They also say that they don't want money to be giving uneven power to
politicians, but that's totally happening without ads.

~~~
badrequest
True, but it's also _very much_ being facilitated by advertising.

------
erichocean
No, they're not. Anything Twitter supports politically will be deemed "non-
political" and "basic human rights" or whatever, and they'll allow it.

~~~
happytoexplain
What makes you say that?

------
tehjoker
This is certainly, on the surface, a great leveling of the influence between
oligarchical interests and the people. I'm hopeful it will play out that way.
I suspect that the oligarchs will simply redouble their efforts on buying bots
and influencers instead of clearly marked adverts.

This is certainly more expensive for them, more uncertain, and more likely to
blow up in their faces if someone is determined to have been paid. Certainly
it may also reduce attainable reach.

It's difficult to see how this will play out even though the alternative
strategy is obvious. Hopefully the people will chalk some advantage.

EDIT: As others have noted, corporations, which are inherently right wing,
will still be able to promote their messaging, so there is some disadvantage
to the left. Marketing pay-day loans? That's a right wing exploitative program
for example.

------
badrequest
Genuinely impressed by this statement. They seem to have put some real thought
into this, and like it or not, they're an advertising company rejecting
business for what they see as the greater good. Bravo.

~~~
buboard
It's also a smart business decision. Avoiding the entire scrutiny and
questions of regulation is worth more than the (modest) amounts spent on
online political advertising.

------
eli
Twitter doesn’t have much political advertising, unlike its rival. This is a
probably very effective PR move more than anything. Timed to coincide with
FB’s earnings no less.

------
tqi
For the people who think this is a good idea, would you also be in support of
a constitutional amendment to ban political advertising?

~~~
olivierlacan
Absolutely.

In many European countries, including France where I'm from, there are never
any political ads until an election season (which could either be tradition or
regulation). During election season political ads are tightly regulated to
prevent someone with a higher ad budget from swarming the "airwaves" with the
kinds of disinformation/propaganda that is so prevalent on U.S. television
networks and other media.

Political ads (and statistical coverage of early poll results) is also banned
in the days before a major election to diminish the impact of
manipulation/disinformation campaigns (discouraging voters because they assume
their vote won't matter).

------
Trias11
The best political ads does not sound political at all.

Yet these could subtly touch on subconscious minds of potential voters to move
the needle toward specific party, movement or candidate.

------
gnicholas
Apparently there will be exceptions for encouraging voter registration. But
will people be able to target these ads in ways that blatantly (or subtly)
target members of a particular party?

Can I promote a tweet encouraging people in a particular state to register to
vote? Probably. What if I target people who like the NRA or Planned
Parenthood? Same question for voter turnout tweets ("don't forget to vote
tomorrow!"). The devil is in the details.

------
cronix
This will definitely help the party and candidates that are barely raising any
money compete with the one that is breaking all records. It would be like a
fire hose competing with a squirt gun. We just can't allow that.

------
trileansoftware
Good luck with that. Anything that can put in a good light some public policy
or is remotely related to some politician can be seen as political ad.

Politicians already make use of that kind of veiled advertising with hot
button issues. And there's a reason sometimes campaigns are mostly the same at
the core except for PROBLEM X WHICH MUST BE SOLVED NOW OR WE ALL DIE.

------
alkonaut
It will be very hard to draw the line between political messages and
everything else. Many areas of the market are almost impossible to make non-
political ads in (fossil fuels, health insurance, ...)

~~~
tomatotomato37
What are you talking about, most of the advertising in those industries has
nothing to do with whatever their lobbyist are doing. It's just menial PR shit
like "Save 20% at United Healthcare", or "Work on cutting-edge technology at
BP", or "Monsanto now offers consulting services to help you optimize your
crop gains". Maybe once in a while they flash some statistic about how diverse
their workforce is or whatever but most of it is just generic commercialism.

It's only really in the valley that companies think listing opinions that
significant percentages of the country disagree with is a good way to build
marketshare.

~~~
alkonaut
I should say for some parts of business it seeems impossible to entirely avoid
political messaging. If BP, Monsanto etc. make 100 ads, 90 of them will not be
political. 1 will be _actually_ political, but 10 of them will definitely be
accused of being political. It will create a problem for those trying to draw
a line.

------
rexpop
What ads aren't political? At this point, when politicians are just
reputation-laundering spokespersons for multinational financial interests, it
makes no difference whether you advertise for the candidate or the product.

Perhaps this will disincentivize investment in electoral politics, but it
won't rescue the public discourse from financiers' influence.

------
woeirua
There is a third option here. Instead of a blanket ban, or selective
enforcement of "fact checking," we could neuter the utility of online
political ads by simply requiring similar disclosures to what you see on
television and by limiting the ability of advertisers to target individuals.
If advertisers could only target certain demographics (e.g. 18-35, 35-50, 50+)
in larger regions (multiple zip codes, or even entire states), then the ads
would be essentially equivalent to TV ads, which I would assume most people
just completely ignore.

Otherwise you wind up in this super nebulous area where you have to either be
an arbiter of the "truth" or what qualifies as a "political" advertisement.

Also, I would be in favor of an outright ban on all advertising until X days
within the election, where X is < 60 days.

------
catalogia
This makes sense.. though I'm not sure it will do much in practice to improve
political discourse. The combination of politicians having twitter accounts
and twitter's content recommendation engine promoting politician's tweets make
me think the perceived effect to the end user (twitter showing people messages
from politicians or their supporters) will remain more or less the same.

But because twitter isn't taking money directly from those politicians, it
perhaps reduces their perceived culpability. It seems like a good move for
twitter.

~~~
rtkwe
It will remove the direct influence on who the ad gets sent to at least, a
tweet will spread organically to a much wider audience than a targeted ad so
messages cannot be as micro-targeted.

~~~
catalogia
Good point. Now if only we could ban micro-targetting in general. It's a
corrosive force to society in a wide array of scenarios, not just political
advertising. (For instance, it's been known to facilitate discrimination in
real estate and the job market.)

~~~
rtkwe
I think for things like jobs, housing, etc that have protected civil rights
the only real way to ensure people's rights aren't being infringed is to make
them completely open and post both the ad and the stats of where the ad was
served/the settings for the targeted audience depending on the type of . Maybe
even need to directly test that the bidder isn't racially targeting with
random test offers if it's a google style bot bidding system. A similar system
is probably needed for political ads because one insidious fact of web
targeted ads is there's much less chance to respond to and potentially debunk
them if they're highly targeted. With radio and television ads you couldn't do
that they'd go to everyone watching so more people outside the targeted demo
would see.

------
tyfon
In Norway political TV adds are banned, I wish it would apply to all media.
The democracy works much better when you have to make a proper argument
instead of just having the best ad.

I'd also like to ban political polling, it is used to push a narrative far too
often instead of discussing the actual issue. Another issue is that parties
will shape their positions according to polls and not what they actually
think. Lastly, some people want to be on the "winning team" and will pick
party based on who is in the lead.

I fully support this move by twitter.

------
nullc
I believe Jack's statement, while obviously well intended, is misleading.

Twitter will stop accepting money for political advertising. This is not the
same as "stop(ping) all political advertising on Twitter".

Other people will continue promote things there and get paid for it regardless
of what twitter's policy is.

I worry that a widespread misunderstanding of this will increase the public's
vulnerability to paid manipulation on Twitter, particularly in a way that
maximizes the impact of the least honest parties.

------
uranusjr
How do you implement it though? I live in Taiwan and constantly see ads from
People’s Daily, which usually contains text sneakily promoting CCP propaganda.
Do those ads count as political? I hope so, otherwise China would most
definitely exploit this. But then do you also ban, say, FOX? The NYT?

I really like Twitter’s decision and the idea behind it. But I also worry this
would end up toothless toward bad actors, and restrictive for those who want
to act morally.

------
FillardMillmore
It makes me wonder if Zuckerberg has seriously considered doing this as well
for Facebook. Considering he's been in congressional hearings twice, I'm sure
the thought has crossed his mind once or twice. The money is too good, so he's
likely willing to walk the tight-rope. I think Twitter is setting a good
precedent here, whether other similar social media sites will follow suit is
the question.

------
minimaxir
The real question is how long it will take for Facebook to follow suit.

~~~
toephu2
Who says they will? They just gained market share and more ad dollars.

~~~
qnsi
Political ads are by rough estimation about 1.1% percent of all revenue

(calculated from [https://articles2.marketrealist.com/2019/05/why-facebook-
con...](https://articles2.marketrealist.com/2019/05/why-facebook-considered-
ditching-political-advertising/))

So not a lot, but still it's 1%

------
cm2187
Call me a Scrooge but my read is rather that whoever wins will piss off the
opposite side, who will blame social media like they did in 2016, and there is
no scenario where twitter doesn't ends up the target of more regulations
unless they stay away from the elections as far as they can.

This will not help with trolls and viral campaigns though.

~~~
pm90
This is a great point, but ducking out of politics is exactly the right move
here to avoid that kind of charge.

Regulation will come with any functioning democracy. If an entity other than
the State has too much power, Democracies will eventually dismantle or defang
it, as they should.

------
ereyes01
This is nice that they aren't selling/boosting political ads (though
apparently there's no solution for buying bot armies). However I feel that the
root of the problem remains unaddressed- a small group of private companies
with their own whims and interests is becoming the sole arbiter of speech and
public discourse.

------
nemo44x
Perhaps it’s my own selection bias but why does it feel like everyone thinks
this will righteously hurt republicans and be beneficial to democrats?

I feel like this is a major blow to democrats more than republicans as
democrats have a larger audience on Twitter. Do democrats not think they too
benefit from carpet bombing ads?

~~~
faitswulff
That's in-line with the announcement, though:

> We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter
> globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.

> \-
> [https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952)

If Democrats have a larger audience, they don't need to pay for the exposure,
they already have it.

~~~
nemo44x
I guess that’s true in many ways. But I wonder how much is preaching to the
choir across the board here as the dynamic is following people you mainly
don’t know.

Meanwhile the ad spend can be reserved for networks full of more middle-of-
the-road people. I guess that’s the big battle ground. And I wonder if
republicans can direct more ad spend there now that Twitter is off limits. I
guess I’m wondering if Twitter was a necessary drain on their resources they
don’t have to worry about now?

------
z3phyr
Does USA have something like an election commision?

If a candidate or their representatives publish false information in the
election season and any citizen complains about it, the election commision can
try the candidate and perhaps even ban the candidate from participating in the
elections.

The onus is directly on the liar to not lie

~~~
smsm42
> If a candidate or their representatives publish false information in the
> election season /.../ perhaps even ban the candidate from participating in
> the elections.

So we'd have elections with no candidates at all. Or, more realistically, we'd
have ones that have opinions matching opinions of those people who sit on the
commission. Nice system, though it's not clear why bother with elections then
at all - we just let the commission - after all, people who know all the truth
must know how to select good people who tell the truth? - to choose suitable
candidates. Elections where candidates that the commission doesn't like are
excluded are no elections anyway - you can look at Russia how it works, they
have "elections" exactly like that - people not approved by Kremlin largely
just are excluded from participation, so nobody can vote for them.

~~~
z3phyr
I just realized that the USA does not have civil services. Like your elected
officials can appoint random people for random things.

Anyway, a good election commision can be formed by pooling career civil
servants, equal representatives from each political party, a bench of retired
judges elected by the Senate for a unit time.

The commision can not make any policy decision. All they can do is ensure that
the elections happen in a clean way. Also banning is one of the extreme
decisions, but if they do ban the candidate, the party has to provide someone
else to contest.

A democracy where all candidates are liars is no better than Russian democracy
where there are no candidates

~~~
smsm42
> A democracy where all candidates are liars is no better than Russian
> democracy where there are no candidates

In every democracy "all candidates are liars", if you call a liar anybody
whose views can be contradicted by somebody else. Most of what candidates talk
about aren't scientific facts, they are opinions and projections and moral
judgements. Even about scientific facts there is considerable disagreement -
what was considered a healthy diet a decade ago, is seen as a nutritional
disaster now, so would a candidate that advocates old diet be called a liar?
What about advocating current one - would such a candidate be a liar in a
couple of years? Some economists think rent control and minimal wage are a
disaster, others think they are a very reasonable and beneficial measures. If
a politician agrees with some of them but not others - is she a liar? There's
not a lot in what politicians say that can be scientifically and robustly
verified as true or false - and those things that really can are largely
inconsequential - even if some politician decides to proclaim pi equals 4,
it's unlikely any actual policy would be influenced by that. So it would
devolve into partisan bickering and gotcha hunting. Which you can amply
witness on multitude of "factchecking" sites, which devolved very quickly from
objective observers into presenting opinions as facts on one side into
"factchecking" internet memes and obvious marked satire on the other.

~~~
z3phyr
> Views contradict from each other

That's a good thing. The views on governance policy can differ. I have no
problem with those things.

I am talking about objective truths like Earth being flat, incorrect dates,
misinformation in speech etc

There are grey areas here too, example being religion, and I concede that area
becomes needlessly murky. Having said that, it needs to be discussed

------
koolba
And of course this has the consequence of reinforcing the entrenched players
with large follower counts’ messages.

------
mkr-hn
This will fail the same way "real name" policies fail. Someone has to draw a
line on what politics (or a real name) _is_ for the purpose of the policy, and
that's going to cut off a lot of useful ads.

For example: An ad for free HIV screening services is political by certain
perspectives.

------
Sommer
I'd love it if Dorsey did this for the right reasons (and applaud the effort
regardless), but seems far more likely that this netted out as a bigger
publicity win.

A policy of "there are no Twitter rules for politicians, just don't make us a
direct accessory to it" is disingenuous at best.

~~~
thebokehwokeh2
I'd argue that in this case, intention is far less important than the outcome.

------
product50
This is a cop out solution. We don't want to be a part of this debate and
neither have the capital to be - so we will just not show any political ads.
Social media is just like television in some ways - it is a channel for
users/businesses to magnify their voice via ads.

------
AdrienLemaire
Great move. This will push some communities to move away from Facebook and use
Twitter as the main political discussion medium.

I'm wondering how that'll affect Twitter's business model though. Assuming
political ads counted for a fair percentage of their revenue stream.

------
adamch
For everyone asking why Twitter or Facebook should treat ads differently to
TV. There are some huge differences between the economics of the platforms
that I haven't seen anyone mention.

Each TV station has a limited number of ad-seconds they can allocate per day.
Because ad-seconds are scarce, prices are expensive, so you get a small number
of expensive ads.

OTOH, Facebook can support a practically unlimited number of ads, shown to
different users, changing as people scroll.

It is _much_ easier to fact-check or apply human judgement to a small number
of TV ads than to millions of social media ads.

Disclaimer: I don't work in the ad industry, I know nothing about this. I just
haven't seen anyone talk about the difference in scale here.

------
gnicholas
I've advertised on twitter, and you can either promote tweets or promote your
account. When you promote an account, it raises the visibility of the account,
its description, and recent tweets (which people end up seeing when they
consider following you or learning more about you).

So promoting an account can have the same effect as promoting a tweet, though
perhaps at a higher cost (because it's a less efficient way of promoting a
tweet). If political advertisers end up doing this, twitter may profit from
their policy shift, but without actually achieving the putative goal.

------
randomsearch
Please, can we all stop saying “but what’s a political ad?”

Surely HN commentators are smart enough to try to answer their question before
posting it. Well, did political ads exist before social media? How does that
work? Etc etc.

------
CodeCube
Probably for the best

------
gojomo
Jack's "earned not bought" effectively means that Twitter's opaque & self-
serving algorithms, rather than explicitly disclosed prices & targeting, will
control what political messages get "reach" on Twitter.

Twitter's bullhorn will thus only be available to those people and messages
that Twitter likes.

Those messages that Twitter doesn't like will be algorithmically confined to a
unlighted cellar, for display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck
in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

------
Seahawkshacker
I support the banning of political ads on any platform that can be subject to
manipulation an or have thousands of bots then go to work to support a side
(not real people). Political ads are nothing more than money in politics. Make
politicians spend that money instead on traveling to towns and having town
halls, greeting people on the streets, businesses, and in as much in person
instead. Have them earn it, not just sit back and have some marketing person
create ads for them.

------
raz32dust
I commend Jack Dorsey for his ethics. I think there could have been a better
solution though - why not just disallow targeting on political ads? Only allow
coarse-grained targeting, say at a state level. You still give political
campaigns the opportunity to leverage the network and spread the word, and you
get at least part of the revenue.

The problem with social media advertising is the targeted nature of ads. If
you take that out, and place ads like DuckDuckGo does, it is not that
different from newspaper ads and much less dangerous.

------
jsonne
They need to be transparent then with how they prioritize organic content.
They've replaced a transparent system (advertising) with an opaque one
(organic feed) and that has consequences.

------
gfodor
For this to work, they need to start immediately with an incredibly
conservative policy, akin to the presumption of innocence in the justice
system. An ad should be presumed political unless it can be shown, through a
series of positive affirmations with the burden of proof on the ad-maker, that
it isn’t. Avoid the slippery slope by saying that some non-political ads will
be banned to ensure all political ads are. For unpaid speech regulation this
would be an insane standard, but for paid speech it’s a just one.

------
linuxdude314
If only spinning up bots was considered as part of political advertising.

I don't think political ads were ever really a problem on Twitter. The crux of
Twitter's problems are what I like to call virtual populism (i.e. bot armies
retweeting propaganda and fake news).

With virtual populism, the illusion of an organic movement is created and this
illusion eventually draws in real humans (after all, bots don't vote).

------
musgrove
It's hard to imagine what this gesture is meant to solve. Political ads are
far more innocuous that the everyday posts of its users, which divide, cement
and sway people's opinions and thoughts much more forcefully. I'm not saying
ban those, but just saying you're not going to run ads, when that's the least
of any problem's solution, is kind of superficial.

------
40acres
Seems like the right move. Personally, I think we are reaching the edges of
what we can reasonably expect from social media companies. If a politician is
lying in their ads, is it up to a social media company to decide the truth or
well informed citizens to decide fact from fiction? In some cases the easiest
way to win is not to play. Hope Zuck gets the message.

------
btbuildem
Suppose we applied a basic test to a potential ad: does it sell a product or a
service? If yes, you can buy ad space for it. If it's "selling" a concept,
idea, way of life, promotes a group, organization etc (basically, NOT selling
a service or a product), it's deemed political and cannot be aired. Would that
work?

------
bobsoap
> For instance, it‘s not credible for us to say: “We’re working hard to stop
> people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone
> pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well...they can
> say whatever they want! ;)”

I can't agree enough with this. Very well put, and I think we all know who the
winky smile refers to.

------
SXX
This can be very bad globally. In countries with totalitarian regimes like
Russia advertising on Twitter was one of few ways to reach politically active
audience in order to make people go and vote. It's literally impossible to buy
political advertising anywhere since government will put pressure on anyone
who make business with opposition.

------
3wolf
I'd rather they did something about their obvious problem with bot
amplification than banning clearly marked advertising.

------
mattlondon
Perfect timing! Just as the UK election campaign kicks off, they ban
advertising for it so we can hopefully finally see a partial reduction to the
lazy journalism of "reporting" on how people are reacting to Party X's ads on
twitter.

Journalists and politicians seem to put a lot more emphasis on twitter than
most people seem to care about.

------
jimkleiber
I look at the analytics for one of my Tweets and at the bottom it says: "Reach
a bigger audience. Get more engagements by promoting this Tweet!"

...or what Jack said: paying to increase reach.

I think I always thought that Twitter ads were these magical separate
entities, when really, they seem to be normal Tweets that are just paid to be
more popular.

------
roadnottaken
Why hasn't this issue come-up with print advertisements? Seems like it
should've been addressed eons ago...

~~~
smileysteve
Print advertisements have a history of being subject to editorial review.

~~~
roadnottaken
And? do those editors have a history of allowing or blocking untruthful ads?

------
hos234
Salute to Twitter for doing something proactive and not just reacting post
facto. That's what leadership is.

------
willart4food
What's a can of worms!

Who decides what's "political" and what it's not?

Wait for it..... the shit show has just begun!

------
irrational
"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." \- Jack Dorsey

So... what is the definition of an issue?

~~~
jes5199
Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde tweeted a reply to someone who asked this question: “hi
- here's our current definition: 1/ Ads that refer to an election or a
candidate, or 2/ Ads that advocate for or against legislative issues of
national importance (such as: climate change, healthcare, immigration,
national security, taxes)”

------
Nerada
Smart move from Twitter. By removing the speech of people they disagree with
under the guise of vague and selective ToS enforcement, they're still able to
push their own political agenda, while removing the recourse that political
advertising would allow.

------
gnicholas
This move will increase scrutiny on the ICYMI algorithm. Does it pick up
tweets on one side of the aisle more than the other? Do people know how the
algorithm works, and can they game it to increase distribution of their
political tweets?

------
mcintyre1994
Given the pretty terrible experience that all social networks are on mobile,
this should make Twitter slightly less awful. With the election coming up in
the UK I can’t imagine Facebook being remotely usable for the next few months.

------
umeshunni
Good to see this. Look forward to seeing TV and print media ban political ads
as well

------
anm89
I think this is an excellent move for twitter. The problem now will be
determining what is a "political ad" which I'd imagine has a lot of edge cases
but if they can do it I think this will be a huge win for them.

------
synt4x1k0
A similar discussion took place here when they took action on Alex Jones.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17929417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17929417)

------
softliving
ads are nothing but propaganda, someone trying to sell something it could be
good or bad.

I see twitter where there are fake profiles and their posts. twitter allows
anyone to register with a fake email using services like mailinator and
continue spreading lies. They should be banned.

I think ads are okay as we have been manipulated by ads via media newspaper
etc. no one questions them, what about the news reporter who is biased and
writes news like the ads. Atleast the ads we know are ads and sane person can
determine based on history that ads are not truth.

------
tolstoshev
They're still gonna pay for reach, just with botnets instead of ads.

------
pacificleo12
Kudos to Jack for this step. it will put pressure on FB to act responsibly.
however Now the debate will shift to what is a political ad. its like superpac
and political party symbiosis again

------
bernardlunn
This is huge and amazing move. I am a big fan of Twitter and @jack and love
their backing of Bitcoin. I love it when the right thing to do is also the
financially smart thing to do.

------
aurelien
They should also ban group of people that spam as advertiser. Most of time
they works in the same room and are paid by the politician party to spread the
word about the polyworm!

------
radium3d
Bots don't have a citizenship ("chinese", "russian"), they merely push the
agenda of the person/persons who have paid the most, no? Are there not many
hijacked computers, routers, devices inside the USA and many other countries
which are one of the most important parts of the bot networks to evade
detection?

I wonder if now that political advertising is banned on twitter if the illegal
/ immoral bot and human armies of agenda pushers will have a larger advantage
than before now that those who follow the rules have lost their outlet of
spreading their message with their donors money beyond their own profiles and
their existing followers?

------
idoh
Final policy 11/15, enforcement starts 11/22\. This seems like a tricky line
to walk. For example, could I promote a Tweet about the UBI without mentioning
Andrew Yang?

~~~
anchpop
I would hope not. They claim they're also banning issue ads

------
rebuilder
When did paid political ads become such a big issue? I was under the
impression it was all the bots and organized trolls that Twitter and Facebook
were taking heat for.

------
dwoozle
Smart. The revenue is hardly worth getting regularly dragged in front of
Congress. Best to leave influence over the political discourse to the Internet
Research Agency.

------
ThinkBeat
Who decides if an ad is political?

Does this mean that it is a block for direct political buys by a candidate

Or will they go through every single and and judge each one if it is political
or not?

------
heretoo
I'm seeing a lot of discussion relating to US laws, but this tweet says the
decision is globally applicable. How are the US laws relevant to the decision?

------
sergiotapia
Why is traditional media given a hard pass while tech companies are being
fisted by this - that honestly they shouldn't even concern themselves with?

------
IronWolve
My favorite, Jack says people can just re-tweet articles and news from popular
accounts. Then twitter bans these popular accounts. Wait a min....

------
maxehmookau
Hooray! This is unequivocally a good thing.

Twitter is admitting it can't police political advertising on the scale that
it runs. So it's banning it.

This is a good move.

------
artsyca
What's missing from this dialogue is the idea that Twitter is fundamentally a
political organization, just as a soapbox is a political tool

------
parasanti
I wonder how shareholders feel about this? Also, is Twitter going to be
neutral on what politicians it selects that get's reach?

------
unfunco
Employee morale probably goes through the roof?

------
gzer0
Will be interesting to see how Facebook plays this out now. Seems as if they
are headed in the complete opposite direction.

------
intended
This will get lost, but we need to end paid news.

Independent new agencies - truly independent, with only one stated goal, being
factual.

------
account73466
"Political" is a view that is not in line with common sense ... which is
entirely based on our political view.

------
kmlx
i guess the stock market shorts weren't wrong after all. $twtr is looking
pretty bleak right about now.

otherwise, like all good deeds, this will mainly affect smaller parties that
don't have enough funds or traction. big ones will continue to advertise via
established (i.e. more expensive) routes.

------
danboarder
I know this is about people paying for posts with money, but if one zooms out
a bit to think about this -- any user of a platform like Twitter is
paying/spending time (aka paying in their time and attention). IMO, trying to
police and stop people from spreading their ideas online (political or
otherwise) is a fools errand, and the antithesis of how social networks
function.

~~~
jimkleiber
I'm starting to see Twitter and Facebook more like the newspapers, and really,
more like the delivery service. Perhaps I could print anything in a newspaper,
which I can't, but even if I could, someone would have to deliver that
newspaper to the doorsteps of people for them to read it or they would have to
go try to find a copy in the store. These platforms already have delivery
routes determined through algorithms, already choosing who receives which
newspapers.

What role do you think these networks should play in distributing these posts
to our door?

~~~
danboarder
Well that is a similar line of reasoning that has been applied to ISPs that
deliver internet itself, and I think music publishers took that line when
suing ISPs for facilitating piracy. I think all forums and UGC platforms deal
with this in their own way. (like Reddit, they mostly let each subreddit have
their own mods that decide what content and topics they want to allow.) In
Twitter's case, I am skeptical of the end game with their current approach,
where the loudest in the room tends to stand out.

------
partiallypro
There's really no reason to run political ads on Twitter, and I doubt Twitter
would have made this decision if it actually hurt them financially in any
meaningful way. Politics on Twitter is quite simple, say something and get
your crowd to retweet it. AOC and Trump are the masters of this, they get a
lot of political messages/lies/misleading messages out, and they don't spend a
dime on it. Facebook is a different animal altogether in terms of politics.

------
lucio
Isn't he implying at some point that people are not smart enough to think for
themselves?

------
proverbialbunny
Campaign finance is illegal in most of the first world. If political ads were
banned in the US, politicians wouldn't need money to get reelected (Ads get
the majority of votes.). When a politician needs money to get reelected they
have to take money from lobbyists.

Banning political ads is crucial linchpin to getting money out of politics.

~~~
partiallypro
Political ads are free speech.

~~~
proverbialbunny
There was a campaign finance law in 1971 that went all the way to the US
Supreme Court. In Buckley v. Valeo, the US Supreme Court ruled that campaign
finance laws are freedom of speech, in that without such laws, the every day
person is restricted from being heard when the wealthy are allowed to use
money beyond what the common person can pay. Because of this, the court upheld
limits on contributions to candidates ruling campaign finance is legal, as
long as it is limited to an amount everyone can participate in.

From the Supreme Court: "The Court affirmed a First Amendment interest in
spending money to facilitate campaign speech, writing, "A restriction on the
amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during
a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the
number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of
the audience reached." Further, the law's "$1,000 ceiling on spending
'relative to a clearly identified candidate,' would appear to exclude all
citizens and groups except candidates, political parties, and the
institutional press from any significant use of the most effective modes of
communication."

The Court upheld limits on contributions to candidates.

For more information checkout:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo)

edit: In 2002 there was another campaign finance law that went to the Supreme
Court, again for freedom of speech. In McConnell v. FEC, the court ruled, "the
need to control corruption overshadowes any minor threat to free speech".

~~~
partiallypro
Neither of those have to do with someone putting $500 down to run a political
ad on Facebook. Local politicians, mayors, etc run political ads. Good luck
policing all of that. If you block an individual from spending $500 on
Facebook ads because of some law, you are violating that person's freedom of
speech. That is entirely separate from campaign finance. Why stop there? Why
not limit what Newspapers can say? They often get stories about politicians
wrong, sometimes even in an effort to sway public opinion.

~~~
proverbialbunny
Why are you repeatedly moving the bar?

------
colorincorrect
counter argument: having something explicitly labeled as "advertisement"
allows for people to take it into context. now that that route has been taken
away, advertisers would pursuit native marketing, even more subversive.

------
throw7
"democratic infrastructure". jack dorsey is selling you something.

------
DSingularity
So, in conclusion — Facebook is anti-democracy and twitter is pro-democracy.

------
netsharc
I was wondering how he was going to explain this in 140^w 280 characters...

------
clay_the_ripper
I see a lot of calls here for facebook to follow suit. I run a facebook
advertising agency and use their tools every day (including the political
advertising tools) and would like to offer some perspective on the potential
nuances here.

When I run an ad on facebook, if the ad contains "issues of national
importance" that ad is subject to the same rules as political advertising.
From facebook, this includes any ads on the following topics:

-civil and social rights

-crime

-economy

-education

-environmental politics

-guns

-health

-immigration

-political values and governance

-security and foreign policy

Some examples of ads that I have run and had personal experience with that
would then be banned if facebook enacted a similar ban:

-Ads for any non-profit or charity dealing with the environment. This would include ads raising money to combat de-forestation in the amazon, setting up marine sanctuaries, or ads about drilling rights in the arctic (all ads I have seen recently or worked on creating)

-Any ads about women's rights or reproductive rights. This includes any ad for planned parenthood, or similar organizations. Also includes ads for charities that raise money to support women's rights in other countries.

-Ads for charities raising money to support refugees in Greece. In fact, every ad for every charity that does basically anything would be banned. These charities deal with issues that are inherently political: the environment, reproductive rights, human rights...the list goes on.

So if facebook banned all this advertising on it's platform, what were going
to end up with is a situation where the internet (for all intents and
purposes, for millions of people "the internet" is essentially facebook) is a
place totally devoid of anything that is not a strictly commercial enterprise.
Selling T-shirts is ok, raising money for charity is not OK. Maybe this is the
boundary we want to collectively set.

Also, saying that this is only for paid reach specifically is not really fair.
Paid reach is the only kind of reach that actually exists for all intents and
purposes on these platforms. It's a pay to play market.

If you ban all political ads, you are also banning anyone from advertising
anything that deals with "issues of national importance" and this will hit
charities (and anyone with a message that is not strictly commercial)
particularly hard.

We work with personalities who want to sell T-shirts with political messages
on them, for example. Those will now be banned. We work with a yoga studio
that wants to highlight their commitment to full time employment for their
employees. Those ads would be banned. We work with an author who writes about
abortion. Ads for her book would be banned.

Is this the kind of platform we want facebook to be? Like it or not, facebook
is how millions of people engage with the world. I don't want to live in a
society that is so afraid of political speech that we have to ban everything
that might hurt us. Let us decide for ourselves what to believe. Are some lies
going to get through? Yeah they will. But that's the consequence of allowing
more "free speech" on a platform. Facebook is a private company, they can do
what they want. They have no obligation to uphold free speech. Personally, I
think Mark Zuckerberg understands that banning these things sets a dangerous
precedent, and I only hope that he is able to defend his decisions and explain
his reasoning.

Because the alternative to allowing some lies to get through in ads is much
much worse.

~~~
proverbialbunny
Not necessarily, because it depends where Facebook would draw that line.

We don't even know where Twitter will draw that line, making it a difficult
problem for them.

They could, for example, allow charity ads, while banning "Vote for X ads."

------
rkop
One can only wonder if this policy would take place if these ads helped
democrats in getting the office in the last election. I would say definitely
not. It's silicon valley and this company's left-leaning CEO.

------
wessorh
We just learned that political speech isn't trouthful

------
vowelless
Does this not give an advantage to people like Trump, who have a large
following and media attention, thus letting them still "advertise" via their
own tweets? Couldn't people with large followings take money to tweet on
behalf of others?

~~~
nautilus12
This is just another way of saying that advertising has evolved and twitter is
only cracking down on advertising 1.0 and not advertising 2.0

------
jacobsenscott
Twitter makes more from "free ads" than paid ads, and they just want an out.
The out is "we aren't making money from political ads!". When you go check
Trump's latest tweet (which can be full of lies) or Uncle Buck's retweet
(which can be full of lies) you are also viewing ads.

Twitter stand is simply: we won't make money directly from political ads
because 1 - we don't make money there anyway, and 2 - this is good PR. However
we will make all the money we can off ads tied to the free for all of russian
bot posts, AOC posts, Trump posts, and Uncle Buck retweets.

Anyone who thinks Jack Dorsey cares at all about democracy vs profits has
blinders on.

~~~
codezero
Totally agree with this. I find it odd that Twitter doesn’t view organic reach
as actually black market paid reach, or at least some component.

Part of the value of running a legit ads campaign is the finances and
incentive to beat away fraud and black market/black hat techniques.

------
coleifer
Still waiting on them to ban those fake accounts.

------
1zael
How much annual revenue are they losing by this?

------
wnevets
Is #FreeHongKong considered a political ad?

~~~
kevincrane
No that's a hashtag

~~~
wnevets
clearly. But if that is the paid ad, is that a political ad?

------
known
Is it due to Elizabeth Warren complaint?

------
quietthrow
SO PROUD OF YOU JACK (and TWITTER)

------
dillondoyle
I help run a digital political agency (with partner(s)). Still thinking
through this but a few initial reactions that might provide a different
perspective:

\- I haven't found a lot of utility in Twitter outside of reaching really
specific insiders/decision makers. In terms of direct response FB is far
superior and FB also wins with targeting, reach, and the persuasion/recall
studies we've done as well. That is to say TW doesn't get much if any of our
client's budget. Seems some larger 'brand name' candidates get better direct
response. Point is it's a small fraction of our digital spend, and I would
guess far less than .5% of twitter's ad revenue.

\- what about paid 'influencer' or social marketing ads? e.g. I pay person XX
to post organically. Or the much larger problem of bots/fake/gamed content.

\- TW seems to be (I can't quantify though maybe others can) to be either
totally inept at reducing fake/gamed content at worst complicit because they
need the growth from fake numbers. This seems like it has much larger impact
than paid political advertising and should be the first thing to get serious
about. This seems like if the goal is to lose weight cutting your nails
probably isn't the first thing to do.

\- I had a strong reaction reading Dorsey's tech points saying ML, micro-
targeting are 'powerful and very effective for __ advertisers.' But to me it
seems odd to make a differentiation that it's ok to use these 'extremely
effective' tools to profitably 'target and force people to see their __ ad'
while blocking political speech (to help this point I left
political/commercial blank, try flipping them). TW will happily 'force people
to see' ads for alcohol, sugar companies, etc and the point is it works,
whether selling a politician or product or Disney if the tech is dangerous for
politics why isn't dangerous for commerce (or where is the line in dangerous
commerce)? IDK I think I have a different perspective on the fundamental
importance of political speech than this group. But this seems like an odd
argument to me. To that point of drawing political lines, what about a company
advertising to sell copies of a racist book on replacement theory, which has
been shown to correlate with recent rise of dangerous white nationalism (mass
shooters buy the book) and externalities like electing Trump?

------
aykutcan
they can't even prevent fake bank twitter accounts and their pnishing ads.

Or they don't want?

------
dmode
Excellent start from Twitter.

------
tibbydudeza
Okay Zuck ... now your turn.

------
brm
_

~~~
partiallypro
"Bots" are such a boogeyman on Twitter, usually from older folks that just
don't understand the nature of the internet. I've seen threads where
completely legitimate people are accused of being "bots." If the problem were
so extreme, it would be much more pronounced. It's incredibly hard to police,
and it happens on every single platform.

~~~
standardUser
Some people may be conflating bots with paid trolls, which are a real and
pervasive problem across many platforms.

------
reubens
I think this kind of response muddies the issue. Refusing political ads by
political parties or promoting political parties is a clean way to define
things, and it sounds like this is what Twitter has done.

You can argue that any other advertising is still political (e.g. retail ads
promoting a ‘capitalist agenda’).

------
rubicon33
I recently started running ads for a company I own. I'll keep it vague but,
the company is just a SaaS for tracking legislation in a certain interesting
way.

Annoyingly, Facebook decided that I was advertising Political content, and
therefor requires a whole series of additional verification steps, as well as
a disclaimer of the fashion "Payed for By _______" right beneath my ad.

Needless to say, it gives my advertisement a feel which I don't think it
should have. It's not a political advertisement. Nor is it about a political,
or social issue. Nor does it promote anything - campaign, legislation, or
otherwise.

It's an ad, for an app, that provides access to data in a totally unbiased
(and unaltered) way.

TLDR; These companies are casting a really wide net in the wake of the
election ads scandal. Unfortunately, some people are getting targeted who
(IMO) shouldn't be and there's ZERO recourse. No phone number to call, no rep
I can explain things to, nothing. I appealed the decision and it was - no joke
- instantly denied. If twitter is anything like Facebook, this means I can no
longer advertise my app on twitter. Lame.

------
lawzup
i think its right to ban political advertising

------
NN88
what about bots?

------
appleflaxen
This is a step in the right direction, but fails to go far enough.

When Trump can exhort violence without being shut down, Twitter is being
hypocritical, and putting profit over democratic principles.

------
throwGuardian
But Twitter and most of social media's employees are overwhelming Democrat.
Google's Public fillings show 87% donated to the Democratic party, and no one
in top leadership donated to the Republicans.

This is such a bogus move, because Twitter knows Trump has out-raised
opponents by leaps and bounds, and the only way to cut his message is to stop
all political adverts.

Remember, Twitter actively engages in censorship that overtly leans left, so
much so that over the past 10 years, PEW research has found a massive,
unmistakable tilt to the left in Twitter membership, which was close to 50-50
not too long ago.

------
lonelappde
So only pro-consumerism political ads are allowed now.

So Toyota can buy ads to promote their gas burning cars, but I can't buy ads
to encourage people to stop burning up the environment.

Only profit-seekers can buy mindshare.

This whole debate is absurd. Trump rose to the White House on $1B worth of
unpaid media exposure by being an outrageous personality. How is that better
for democracy than paid ads?

------
eternalny1
This is fantastic.

I recall seeing a Tweet from US Senator Lindsey Graham today which was
essentially a hack-job attempt to raise additional defense money for Trump.

My first thought was "this really needs to be flagged", until I noticed the
small little "promoted" tag under it.

Well, no more of that nonsense.

------
asdf333
good job jack

------
hota_mazi
Wouldn't Trump's tweets fall in the category of "political advertising"?

------
jdkee
Here is Jack Dorsey's commentary thread:

[https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952](https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952)

~~~
psychometry
If only there was a way to communicate more than a couple sentences at the
time over the internet. Someone should make that!

~~~
notatoad
You can't really criticise twitter for this - last year they were all ready to
launch a way to embed text posts in a tweet like images can currently be
embedded in a tweet, until the userbase revolted and they had to cancel the
plan.

~~~
catalogia
Really? The twitter userbase actually prefers it this way? That's baffling to
me. Did the revolting userbase provide any reasons or explanations for this
preference?

~~~
walls
The average Twitter user isn't interested in more than a tweets worth of
information.

------
kpU8efre7r
ITT: They'll switch to bots! They'll just start doing x!

So? We can address that when we get there. This is a step in the right
direction for once.

~~~
b34r
Agreed, just keep filling in holes until it’s impractical to dig new ones.

------
dr-detroit
Twitter still exits? Huh.

------
magwa101
FINALLY. Now how hard was that??

~~~
toephu2
Very. How do you enforce it and what defines a political ad? Who gets to be
the judge, jury and enforcer? A contract Twitter employee making less than
$20/hour in a low-tax country like Ireland?

------
0x445442
This is just a pretext for Twitter to allow left wing political ads and ban
right wing political ads. Twitter is incapable of holding itself to any kind
of objective standard.

------
bedhead
Beyond spineless of Jack and everyone at Twitter. Political ads seem to work
just fine on TV, radio, print, and everywhere else on the web. Pathetic that
Twitter decided to bow down to the most paranoid in our society. All he is
doing is validating these stupid conspiracy theories and cementing how scary
it is that he has so much control on freedom of expression in modern society.

I will bet _anything_ that Twitter allows political ads for the 2024 election
with Trump gone.

~~~
munificent
_> Political ads seem to work just fine on TV, radio, print, and everywhere
else on the web._

It's hard for me to interpret those other media as working "just fine":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton#Horton_in_the_19...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton#Horton_in_the_1988_presidential_campaign)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_Door_(advertisement)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_Door_\(advertisement\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth)

------
jayess
Now the fun part -- defining political ads.

~~~
Barrin92
in 95% of cases it's a trivial decision, in particular if you want to stop the
most egregious offenders. It's like the infamous line about porn, you know it
when you see it.

On edge cases time will work out standards, that's what these companies ought
to employ humans for.

------
acollins1331
We don't let blatantly false ads run on TV. Why is it so hard for Facebook or
Twitter to do the same thing?

~~~
throwaway5752
Because Facebook wants those ads. They productize the ability to run them, and
it's revenue they want. They lie about or disguise their participation in the
market and their policies policing that content. Facebook continues to take
steps to get more of that revenue. It's not "hard", it's just just they don't
want to do it.

~~~
busterarm
I'm not sure that's it. Twitter was going to be sued if they allowed one party
to advertise but not the other. This decision allows them to still behave with
some partisanship via their moderation policy.

Facebook is taking the safer position in this case, IMO, from a
legal/regulatory perspective. It'll be interesting to see what shakes out.

------
subsaharancoder
Would a pro-life advert, which has obvious political ramifications depending
on which side of the divide you are on, qualify as a political ad? I ask
because Twitter has actively been blocking/stopping pro-life organizations
from running ads with zero transparency on how the decision was arrived at or
which policy it violates, but doesn't apply the same standard to pro-choice
groups and in fact gives them carte blanche to continue running ads. Twitter
has clearly shown its bias on multiple occasions and I don't expect this to
change in the short or long term.

~~~
subsaharancoder
Vijay Gadde of Twitter:

here's our current definition: 1/ Ads that refer to an election or a
candidate, or 2/ Ads that advocate for or against legislative issues of
national importance (such as: climate change, healthcare, immigration,
national security, taxes)

[https://mobile.twitter.com/vijaya/status/1189664481263046656](https://mobile.twitter.com/vijaya/status/1189664481263046656)

Just shut down Twitter and let's move on

