Twitter's political ad ban just hit and it's already pissing off conservatives

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Twitter's political ad ban just hit, and it's already pissing off conservatives

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It's not like we didn't see this coming. 

On Friday, Twitter, as promised, released a detailed explanation of its new policy governing paid political ads on the platform. And, as to be expected, a host of prominent conservatives are crying foul. 

The policy, teased by Jack Dorsey in an Oct. 30 Twitter thread, was fleshed out in a series of blog posts explaining just what will and will not be allowed once it goes into effect on Nov. 22. Under the new rules, individuals or groups will no longer be able to pay to promote so-called political content. 

"We define political content as content that references a candidate, political party, elected or appointed government official, election, referendum, ballot measure, legislation, regulation, directive, or judicial outcome," reads the policy page. "Ads that contain references to political content, including appeals for votes, solicitations of financial support, and advocacy for or against any of the above-listed types of political content, are prohibited under this policy."

In other words, politicians will no longer be able to run ads asking for donations, and Super PACs will no longer be able purchase ads that lobby against legislation.

Now, there are two important things to keep in mind. First, politicians and organizations will still be able to tweet these things — they just won't be able to use Twitter's micro-targeting tools to engage in paid promotion of those tweets. Second, this new policy applies to all users — regardless of issue or political party. 

You might miss that latter point if you were to listen solely to Trump campaign officials, however.

"Whatever they come up with, we fully expect Twitter to continue to censor, block, or to incur 'bugs' that will unfairly silence President Trump and conservatives," Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, told the New York Times. 

This petulant refusal to engage with reality should come as no surprise. When the policy was first announced, but not fully detailed, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, insisted it was a move to "silence Trump and conservatives."

More recently, on Nov. 11, Senator Ted Cruz attempted to sum up what he erroneously believed Twitter's new policy to be: "Lefty PC propaganda will be allowed; actual ‘facts’ will not." 

Now, that's not to say that there isn't some gray area with Twitter's political ad policy. Importantly, when it comes to "cause-based advertising," things aren't as cut and dry as Twitter might wish they were. 

For example, a group could run an ad advocating for "environmental stewardship" in general but not for the Green New Deal specifically. You can imagine how that might get confusing and how people might attempt to game the system to slip their ads through the cracks. 

Threading this enforcement needle will likely be a delicate task for whoever Twitter assigns to approve or deny ads in the coming days. But we can rest assured that, going forward, one thing is certain: conservatives will continue to claim, likely without any supporting evidence, they are being unfairly censored. 

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November 15, 2019 at 02:45PM