Twitter bans political ads

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Twitter bans political ads (older podcast)

"[Mark Zuckerberg] ‘Banning political ads favors incumbents and whoever the media chooses to cover. But practically even if we wanted to ban political ads, it's not even clear where you draw the line. There are many more ads about issues than there are directly about elections. Will we ban ads about health care or immigration or women's empowerment? And if you're not going to ban those, does it really make sense to give everyone else a voice in political debates except for the candidates themselves? So there're going to be issues any way you cut this. And I believe that when it's not absolutely clear what to do that we should err on the side of greater expression.’...

‘Aaron Chowdhry was digital Creative Director for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in 2016. And worked on new media for Barack Obama in 2008’...

‘It's remarkable that Jack Dorsey has managed to put people like me firmly on the side of Mark Zuckerberg. But I think he's just reading the room. You know, he's saying there's a lot of pressure from people wanting to stop misinformation, wanting to blame someone for their electoral failures, etc. And it's a convenient target. And as was just said, you know, Twitter ads are expensive and a bit useless and not that popular. But this pressure that's being put on Facebook could actually really be disastrous for grassroots.’

‘That's what worries you as a political campaigner. That if Facebook does the same thing, is pushed to do the same thing, what would that mean for someone like you?’

‘It would put campaigns like Bernie Sanders, like Elizabeth Warren, like Labour's, like Momentum’s here at a disadvantage because they have people power and not institutional power. And when you have people power you need to connect with them online. And Facebook, it is a shame that a private company has become the public square but that does not mean that that is not the public square’

‘But by the same token doesn't it also mean that it would reduce the ability for for Russia to try and influence elections, for gun owners or people who might have sympathies with the far right to be targeted?’

‘It might. It might reduce some of these things, but I think in a far greater way it reduces ordinary people power. I mean, the slight influence that I think foreign governments are able to influence through misinformation campaigns, no matter how targeted or systemic pales in comparison to the rise of people's movements we have seen happen online. Whether that is in the Middle East, whether that is in America or in the UK’

‘You say slight influence. You know there are huge troll factories in Russia pumping out loads of material all the time. We know they tried to influence the-’

‘They made millions of ads. And yet, you know, we can show that the average American saw a very, very small fraction of these, and how influential are they? It's hard to say. The election pattern in America followed exactly what a lot of people predicted based on economic and polling models. And so it's really hard to make the case that misinformation campaign was the critical factor.’

‘Okay, but when this ban comes into force on Twitter, individuals, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, they'll all still be able to tweet exactly the same campaign video just themselves rather than in a-’

‘They absolutely will. And organic reach is really important, especially on Twitter. But the thing is, the next Bernie Sanders doesn't already have an army, doesn't already have a big following, needs to find people, needs to reach people. You do that by interest, you do that by geography, and you do that by targeted ads. It's not just this insidious way to get into the brains of, you know, people who you're trying to convince them something. It's actually a way just to reach people in a certain place because you can't afford to reach everyone’

‘But don't you think when people see promoted content, that there's something, the minute that you see those words, it doesn't have the same credibility if you like, than when someone you know shares it to you. If you see it in a more organic, non paid for way, it has more resonanc’...

‘It's not such a big deal get rid of them. However, I feel like this is part of a movement of people to pressure a new kind of fact checking online that I think a lot of us find alarming. I would hate to see Facebook become the arbiter of what's truth, in the same way that say the three television networks in America in the latter half of the 20th century. It seemed very calm. It seemed like there was no misinformation because there was essentially a media monopoly of people who agreed. Those dissenting voices that are making so much noise and consternation aren’t-’

‘Yet there are campaign videos and certainly other political content that do have things that are misleading or sometimes deliberate falsehoods, it does happen. And Mark Zuckerberg was put under significant pressure on Capitol Hill the other day by Alexandra Occasio Cortez, when she took him to task on whether Facebook would remove material that was, that contained deliberate falsehoods. And he said they wouldn't. You agree with that?’

‘I agree with that. I admire the Congresswoman very much, and I see what she is trying to get at. But people have to be the arbiter of what's truth themselves. They, we cannot rely on the-’ ‘They’re not equipped to be the arbiters of truth’

‘We used to be. We used to have a less sort of infantile view of what the media was and how it was fed to us. I mean, you know, Britain has an amazing tradition of tabloid journalism in which people know what they're getting, know how to interpret it. And by reading a variety of sources arrive at the truth, which is obviously in between all of these things. We're now in a situation where we're asking a company, we're asking Google, we’re asking a blue checkmark, to be the arbiter of truth. And to me that is far more dangerous because it gets into a situation where we do have a monopoly on truth by corporations then’...

‘That super charging effect that's happened online, that has given rise to Jeremy Corbyn, to Bernie Sanders, to many, many things, that's going to be gone. We're putting the people at a permanent disadvantage against power and I think that would really be a shame’

‘And probably helped the rise of Donald Trump’

‘And probably helped the rise of Donald Trump.’

‘Okay, but you accept that that's all part of the same-’

‘Yeah, that is part of the same... power in the hands of the people.’"


Strange, I thought it was only in authoritarian countries that journalists were pro-censorship