This archive report was first published on 31 October 2019.
Twitter's decision to ban paid political ads has sparked a heated debate about the role of social media in politics.
On October 30, 2019, Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the platform would be banning all paid political advertisements, effective as soon as next month.
According to Dorsey, the decision was made to prevent the spread of misinformation and to promote a more level playing field in politics.
"We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought," Dorsey tweeted. "Why? A few reasons..."
He went on to explain that online political campaigns or ads have introduced unparalleled risks such as unchecked misleading information and deep fakes at an alarming rate.
"Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale," Dorsey tweeted.
Facebook, which has been facing backlash over its decision to exempt politicians from fact-checking by third parties, has been put on the spotlight following Twitter's move.
"This is great. I hope @Facebook and @Youtube follow Twitter's lead," tweeted Steve Marmel.
