Social media platform, Twitter, has placed a ban on political adverts, saying “political message should be earned not bought”.
In a tweet on Wednesday, the Chief Executive Officer of the platform, Jack Dorsey, said that the decision was made not to check the increasing velocity, sophistication and overwhelming scale of deep fakes.
The statement reads, “ We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally.
“We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons.
“A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet.
“Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimised and targeted political messages on people.
“We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.
“While Internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.
“Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimisation of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes all at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.
“These challenges will affect all Internet communication, not just political ads.
“Best to focus our efforts on the root problems, without the additional burden and complexity taking money brings. Trying to fix both means fixing neither well, and harms our credibility.”
