Twitter's rules for politicaladvertising will include new restrictions on micro-targeting, a move that willincrease pressure on Facebook, the company announced on Friday.
The policy rollout follows Twitter CEO JackDorsey's surprise announcement on 30 October that the company would ban allpolitical advertising due to a belief that "political message reach should beearned, not bought". The new rules will go into effect on 22 November.
"Advertising that uses micro-targetingpresents new challenges that are not yet fully understood," said Vijaya Gadde,Twitter's head of legal, policy and trust and safety, on a conference call withreporters on Friday. "It's a big change for us as a company, but one we believeis going to make our service and hopefully political outcomes around the worldbetter."
Micro-targeting onFacebook is significantly more advanced – and more lucrative – than it is onTwitter. Facebook's vast trove of data about its billions of users has allowedit to offer advertisers an incredibly powerful machine for targeting precisesegments of a population with messages tailored to their personalcharacteristics.
Facebook has facedsignificant criticism over its political ads policies in recent months, and theidea of placing restrictions on micro-targeting has gained popularity,including with Ellen Weintraub, the chair of the Federal Election Commission.Such rules could have significant implications for Facebook's business.Twitter's vice-president of trust and safety, Del Harvey, said on Friday thatthe company did not expect material changes to its fourth-quarter revenuesbased on the new restrictions.
Under Twitter's new policy, candidates for political office, political parties and elected or appointed government officials will be entirely barred from running ads of any kind. In the United States, political action committees, Super Pacs and advocacy not-for-profits knew as 501(c)(4)s will also be banned from any advertising.
All users will be banned from running ads that reference candidates, parties, officials, elections, referendums, ballot measures, legislation, regulation or judicial outcomes. The sole exception to this rule will be news publishers, provided they meet Twitter's standards for certification as a news outlet. News outlets will be allowed to promote reporting about political issues, but will not be allowed to advertise explicit advocacy journalism, such as an editorial board endorsement of a political candidate.
The new policy does carveout an exception for ads by non-political figures or organizations to advocatefor political or social causes. This appears designed to allay concerns raisedby the US presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren and others that the new ruleswould silence climate change activists while giving free rein to fossil fuelcompanies.
These "cause-based" adscan address political issues such as the environment, economy or "socialequity" as long as they do not directly advocate for or against legislative,electoral, regulatory or judicial outcomes. These issue ads will be subject toTwitter's new restrictions on micro-targeting, however, and can only be aimedat broad geographies or non-political keywords or interests. Advertisers willnot be able to target their ads toward other, more personal characteristics,such as race, gender or political affiliation. "Cause-based advertising hasvalue and can help drive public conversation around important topics, but westill don't think it should be used with the goal of driving politicallegislative outcomes," said Harvey.
Twitter will allowfor-profit organizations to run cause-based ads if they are related to anorganization's values or principles, as long as the ad does not have the"primary goal" of influencing political, judicial, legislative or regulatoryoutcomes.
The company is not introducing an explicit ban on false statements in these issue-based ads – an area that has sparked considerable debate after Facebook decided to allow politicians to promote false information in ads.
"One of the benefits of Twitter being a public platform is that you can be held accountable for what you say," said Harvey. "Part of what we're trying to do with the limits on targeting is to prevent those super-siloed arguments."
