[Vision2020] Wired.com, 10-30-19 "See, Facebook? Twitter Proves You Can Ban Political Ads"

[Ted Moffett]

Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
---------------------------
Twitter has decided to ban all political ads on its platform, while
Facebook continues to allow even ones that lie.

https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-bans-political-advertising/

10.30.2019 07:19 PM

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced on Wednesday that the company will soon
ban all political advertisements on the platform globally. That decision
provides a stark contrast to Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has
spent recent weeks defending
<https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-endures-another-grilling-capitol-hill/>
his
decision to allow political ads of all kinds on its platform—even ones that
contain falsehoods.

“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,”
Dorsey wrote in a multi-tweet thread
<https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634360472829952> explaining the
decision. “Political message reach should be earned, not bought.”

The new policy applies to political candidates as well as advertising
around political issues, but will include exceptions for things like voter
registration. The company plans to reveal a detailed version of the policy
on November 15, and it will go into effect on November 22.

Facebook, on the other hand, has tried to avoid playing referee in
political debates by declining to fact-check its political ads. That policy
has earned Zuckerberg enemies in Congress, who grilled him on the decision
last week <https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-needs-to-shut-up/>,
and among Facebook employees, more than 250 of whom have signed a letter
opposing the policy.

Just minutes after Dorsey’s tweets, Zuckerberg defended the company’s
handling of political speech on the company’s third-quarter earnings call.
Without mentioning Twitter by name, he noted that competitors like Google
continued to host political ads and that broadcasters are required by the
FCC to air them.

“I don’t think it’s right for private companies to censor political ads or
the news," Zuckerberg said. “Would we really want to block ads for
important political issues like climate change or women’s empowerment?”

Zuckerberg argued that political ads are an important component of free
speech—an amorphous principle in the context of a private
company—especially for candidates and issues that receive less media
coverage. “People who say the answer is simple haven’t thought through all
the nuances and downstream arguments.”

But Facebook’s policy of allowing lying in political ads has obvious,
immediate repercussions. This month, when the Donald Trump campaign
circulated an advertisement that instigated a false rumor about
presidential candidate Joe Biden, Facebook declined to take the ad down.

It also hasn’t always been applied consistently, or with obvious bounds.
During a tense visit to Congress last week, US representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez asked Zuckerberg to define the parameters of the policy.
Could she pay to advertise the incorrect election date to predominantly
black zip codes? No, Zuckerberg said; Facebook doesn’t tolerate voter
suppression, so it would take that content down. Could she take out an
advertisement on Facebook saying that Republicans supported the Green New
Deal? Zuckerberg stumbled. “I don’t know the answer to that off the top of
my head,” he said. “Probably?”

If Facebook has made the issue of political ads seem unavoidably thorny,
Twitter’s policy makes the answer seem stupidly simple. Want to avoid
refereeing political speech? Don’t allow the ads.

In his tweets, Dorsey wrote that challenges to civic discourse—from
misinformation to manipulated videos to microtargeting—only become more
complex when money is involved. “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! 😉’,” Dorsey tweeted,
in a direct jab at Facebook.

While Twitter’s decision may earn it kudos in the midst of the backlash
against Facebook, some have described the policy as “extreme,” noting that
it may do little to improve civil discourse on the platform in general.
Daniel Kreiss, a professor of political communication at the University of
North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media, says that the
advertisements aren’t the problem. Instead, platforms should examine their
policies around custom ad targeting, which incentivizes extremist messages.

“The challenge here is that we need to have a system where we recognize the
important role that political ads have long played in American political
discourse, but to build more friction into the system,” says Kreiss. “We’re
stuck between two extremes: We have Facebook saying everything goes, and
Twitter saying nothing goes. There’s a sensible position in the middle,
which is why not allow paid political ads but get away from hypertargeting?”
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