INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Sometimes it feels as if Internet platforms are turning everything upside down, from politics to publishing, culture to commerce, and of
course swapping truth for lies.
This week bizarro reversalwas the vista of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, a tech CEO famed for being entirely
behind the moral curve of understanding what his product is platforming (i.e
nazis), providing an impromptu ‘tweet storm& in political speech ethics.
Actually he was schooling Facebook Mark Zuckerberg — another
techbro renowned for his special disconnect with the real world, despite running a massive free propaganda empire with vast power to
influence other people lives — in taking a stand for the good of democracy and society.
So not exactly a full reverse then.
In short,
Twitter has said it will no longer accept political ads, period.
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 democratic infrastructure may not be prepared
It worth stepping back in order to address.
— jack
(@jack) October 30, 2019
Whereas Facebook recently announced it will no longer
Aka: Lies are fine, so long as you&re paying Facebook to spread them.
You could argue there a certain surface clarity to Facebook position
it sums to ‘when it comes to politics we just won&t have any ethics&
Presumably with the hoped for sequitur being ‘so you can&t accuse us of bias&.
Though that actually a non sequitur; by not applying any
ethical standards around political campaigns Facebook is providing succour to those with the least ethics and the basest standards
So its position does actually favor the ‘truth-lite&, to put it politely
(You can decide which political side that might advantage.)
Twitter position also has surface clarity: A total ban! Political and issue ads
But as my colleague Devin Coldewey quickly pointed out it likely to get rather more fuzzy around the edges as the company comes to defining
exactly what is (and isn&t) a ‘political ad& — and what its few &exceptions& might be.
Indeed, Twitter definitions are already raising
For example it has apparently decided climate change is a ‘political issue& — and will therefore be banning ads about science
While, presumably, remaining open to taking money from big oil to promote their climate-polluting brands… So yeah, messy.
hi & here's
our current definition: 1/ Ads that refer to an election or a candidate, or2/ Ads that advocate for or against legislative issues of
national importance (such as: climate change, healthcare, immigration, national security, taxes)
— Vijaya Gadde (@vijaya) October 30,
2019
There will clearly be attempts to stress test and circumvent the lines Twitter is setting
The policy may sound simple but it involves all sorts of judgements that expose the company political calculations and leave it open to
charges of bias and/or moral failure.
Still, setting rules is — or should be — the easy and adult thing to do when it comes to content
standards; enforcement is the real sweating toil for these platforms.
Which is also, presumably, why Facebook has decided to experiment with
not having any rules around political ads — in the (forlorn) hope of avoiding being forced into the role of political speech policeman.
If
that the strategy it already looking spectacularly dumb and self-defeating
The company has just set itself up for an ongoing PR nightmare where it is indeed forced to police intentionally policy-provoking ads from
its own back-foot — having put itself in the position of ‘wilfully corrupt cop&
Slow hand claps all round.
Albeit, it can at least console itself it monetizing its own ethics bypass.
Here is @AOC's full questioning of
Mark Zuckerberg.
"Could I run ads targeting Republicans in primaries saying that they voted for the Green New Deal?"
pic.twitter.com/VrGQw7UzIW
— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) October 23, 2019
Twitter opposing policy on political ads also isn&t
immune from criticism, as we&ve noted.
Indeed, it already facing accusations that a total ban is biased against new candidates who start
with a lower public profile
Even if the energy of that argument would be better spent advocating for wide-ranging reform of campaign financing, including hard limits on
If you really want to reboot politics by levelling the playing field between candidates that how to do it.
Also essential: Regulations
capable of enforcing controls on dark money to protect democracies from being bought and cooked from the inside via the invisible seeding of
propaganda that misappropriates the reach and data of Internet platforms to pass off lies as populist truth, cloaking them in the
shape-shifting blur of microtargeted hyperconnectivity.
Sketchy interests buying cheap influence from data-rich billionaires, free from
accountability or democratic scrutiny, is our new warped ‘normal&
But it shouldn&t be.
There another issue being papered over here, too
Twitter banning political ads is really a distracting detail when you consider that it not a major platform for running political ads
anyway.
During the 2018 US midterms the category generated less than $3M for the company.
Since we are getting questions: This decision
was based on principle, not money
As context, we&ve disclosed that political ad spend for the 2018 US midterms was
