Update: The official policy has now been released, and it’s less severe for issue organizations than the initial announcement suggested. But there’s a lot of gray area here, and a lot of questions remain about how it will be enforced. Nonprofits should prepare for delays, disapprovals, and confusion as this policy rolls out.
Last week, Twitter announced that it’s banning all political ads, including issue ads, from its platform:
We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…🧵
— jack 🌍🌏🌎 (@jack) October 30, 2019
The problem of undue influence from political ads is real and serious. But is Twitter’s response good? Bad? Helpful? Harmful? I suspect the answer is “all of the above,” so I want to unpack some of the implications of this.
Twitter’s approach to dealing with political ads is, probably deliberately, a stark contrast to Facebook’s approach. Where Facebook has raised higher and higher hurdles for anyone wanting to run politics-oriented ads (but has been unwilling or unable to deal with related issues like false claims in the ads themselves), Twitter is attempting to wash their hands of the problem altogether.
Who’s right? I’m honestly not sure – this is a hugely complicated problem with a vast scope, and until we develop a perfect and unbiased AI that can scan all ads and separate the honest from the misleading (which is to say, never), we’re stuck with imperfect solutions. I’m glad Twitter has taken a strong step to dealing with this problem.
However, I have some concerns, especially as it relates to nonprofits, especially as it relates to progressive movements.
While the details on what’s included in “issue ads” are yet to be revealed (certain “issues” like voter registration will apparently be exempt), this likely means many nonprofits won’t be able to advertise on Twitter at all.
That is not as big a deal as you might think, and I don’t expect this to have much direct impact on most organizations. I’ve heard from a lot of fellow consultants the same thing I tell my own clients: Twitter ads usually don’t have great ROI for our purposes. I tend to recommend Twitter ads only for specific uses, or if a client has already invested a great deal in other ad platforms and wants to branch out. But why exclude issue ads in the first place? Dorsey’s announcement says:
“We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent. Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we’re stopping these too.”
The problem here is that “everyone” isn’t being prevented from buying ads. How this affects organizations’ issues will depend a lot on implementation. Can an oil company run ads falsely declaring its products to be “clean energy,” while an environmental organization can’t run ads about fighting climate change? Can a union-busting corporation run ads painting a rosy picture of their brand, while their union is banned from promoting its side? Can health care companies and pharmaceutical companies advertise their profit-hungry offerings, while health nonprofits are forbidden from advertising about health care reform?
Politics is everywhere. “Political” issues aren’t limited to candidates and nonprofits. There’s already a big imbalance in nonprofits’ ability to raise awareness about issues relative to the corporations who may oppose them, and it looks like Twitter may be cutting off that avenue entirely.
Finally, while this may be an effective way of eliminating one part of the problem, there are so many other angles that Twitter has repeatedly failed to address. To quote Dorsey again:
“We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
But a lot of political organic reach is being falsely earned, too. While Facebook has increasingly limited pages’ organic reach, including nonprofit pages, both platforms have a problem with provocative organic content being boosted by their algorithms. From bots to fake accounts, we’re regularly seeing controversies stirred up by political operatives without buying any ads at all, being boosted by social algorithms, and it’s alarmingly difficult to tell them apart from the real thing. But Twitter hasn’t cracked down on that. In fact, they seem to be making it harder than ever to get problematic or even offensive content taken down:
FYI @twitter no longer allows you to report homophobic/racist/ableist/sexist posts unless you were directly attacked in the tweet. You can still report, but they now send this message. So it’s cool for someone to use hate speech, so long as they don’t use it toward you. pic.twitter.com/zA3RZfp5Ji
— Jamie McGonnigal (@McBenefit) October 31, 2019
While I’m glad Twitter and Facebook are both starting to take action on this overwhelmingly important problem, we’ve still got a long way to go. I hope this move to limit nonprofits’ advertising reach doesn’t become a trend, because while we desperately need more fairness and transparency on social media around our elections, we also can’t afford to take away one of nonprofits’ most effective tools for staying part of the conversation.