There has been much debate about the stance that Facebook has taken involving political ads. The social media giant now has a policy that they will not fact check any political ads. They will also not remove political ads that contain lies. The only time they will remove a political ads is if it encourages violence or contains images which are not appropriate. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that he does not want to get into the business of censoring politicians. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has a much different approach. He announced that Twitter will not run any political ads in the future. Needless to say, many people were surprised by this turn of events.
Dorsey said that the political world has become too toxic. He feels that it is much better to distance himself from politics altogether. Twitter will be losing literally millions of dollars every year because of this decision. However, he believes that his company will be better off in the long run. Only time will tell if that is the case. Politicians are relying on Facebook to get their message to very specific demographics. Nobody involved in the 2020 presidential race has spent more on Facebook ads than President Donald Trump.
It will be very interesting to see if Twitter sticks to their guns where this new policy is concerned. According to Tech Crunch, as the presidential race heats up, there will be a greater demand for political ads next year. Twitter has changed their mind on many policies they have started before. This is a big blow for politicians. It is true that Facebook is much more popular when it comes to being a place where politicians post ads. However, Twitter was still a very big place for politicians to get their message out to the masses.
Will the decision of Twitter have any impact on what Facebook does about the political ads they run? They have not released a statement as of yet. Mark Zuckerberg has said that political ads account for a tiny fraction of the money they make from ad sales. Therefore, they could get rid of political ads tomorrow and it would have zero impact on their revenue. That being said, he feels Facebook should keep running the ads because the media would have too much influence if they stopped. He also thinks that incumbents would have too much of an advantage without Facebook for new candidates to advertise on.
