Twitter bans political ads — a short-term revenue hit for long-term trust
Snacks / Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Twitter just banned one of its revenue streams (via tweet)... Bold move. Misinformation (aka lies, false info, and deceptive non-truths) has hit such a level that Twitter's CEO banned political ads on Twitter — his tweet-based announcement also casually trolled Facebook:
- For instance, it‘s not credible for us to say: “We’re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well...they can say whatever they want! 😉” -- @Jack
Kill misinformation... (except when it comes to politicians). They're Facebook and Twitter's big exception. Both platforms let political leaders post without fact-checking. Plus, they won't remove/flag tweets/posts from politicians even if they're false.
- Zuck's approach: He doesn't want to referee free speech — a politician lying is in-and-of-itself, news, that shouldn't be censored by Facebook.
- Jack's approach: But getting paid to expand the reach of misinformation is where Twitter's drawing the line (Facebook isn't into line drawing).
This is straight-up #ShortTermCost cost for #LongTermGain... Jack's leadership on a divisive topic will probably hurt profits before it helps them:
- Short-term = lost revenues: Twitter won't snag any of the advertising bonanza of 2020 election campaigns.
- Long-term = gained trust/cred: Twitter can now say it's doing more than Facebook to limit the spread of misinformation, whether it's from a politician or not — and that may earn new users.