Twitter publishes detailed policy for banning political ads

Twitter has outlined its policy for banning political ads. Politicians are prohibited from buying advertisements, and advertisements based on social themes are restricted.

Twitter announced last month that it would refuse political ads from November. Exactly how that would be designed is yet to be known. from the new terms and conditions it now becomes more concrete what exactly the plans of the social network entail. The plans will take effect from November 22. According to the new policy, politicians, but also political candidates or parties are no longer allowed to advertise on the platform. Much of the policy is aimed at American politics, so that, for example, political action committees or PACs are not allowed to buy advertisements.

Under the new rules, regular users are also no longer allowed to display advertisements about candidates, parties, policies or court decisions. However, there will be an exception for news organizations, which must comply with Twitter’s rules to be labeled as such. More complicated is the policy surrounding advertisements on politically sensitive topics such as abortion, climate change or the economy. They are allowed, but they are not allowed to take a political or legal position. In addition, those ads may not be “microtargeted” to specific groups, but only to broad geographic or interest groups.

It is striking that Twitter does not explicitly support fact-checking the content of advertisements in the new policy. Recently, competitor Facebook came under fire for making a very clear statement by not allowing political ads to fall within its fact-checking policy. When Twitter announced the current measures, it seemed for a while that the microblogging platform would do just that. Twitter does indicate immediately that the policy will change in the near future and that it will continue to update the rules.