SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- U.S. social media company Twitter said Wednesday that it will ban all political advertisements across its platform to prevent them from affecting voters in U.S. general elections.
"We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought," Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted.
"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," he explained in a slew of tweets.
He said that political ads on the internet presented new challenges to civic discourse, such as machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes.
Twitter's new policy formed a sharp contrast to U.S. social media giant Facebook Inc., whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly said his company will not ban political ads that even contain false information or speeches by politicians to ensure "freedom of speech."
However, Dorsey had a different opinion on that issue. "This isn't about free expression. This is about paying for reach," he said.
"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," he continued.
Dorsey said the company would stop accepting political ads on Nov. 22 and give current advertisers a notice period to deal with the new changes.
Twitter Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal echoed Dorsey's statement, saying the decision was "based on principle, not money."
He disclosed that political ads only account for a small portion of the company's business as sales of such advertising earned it a merely less than 3 million U.S. dollars during the midterm elections in 2018.
