With its ad business in crisis, Twitter eases ban on political ads | CNN Business

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More than three years ago, Twitter banned political and issue-based ads amid broader concerns that politicians could pay to target social media users with false or misleading information.

Now, under new owner Elon Musk, the company is easing that ban, in a move that could provide Twitter with a much-needed sales boost at a time when Musk is urgently seeking new revenue streams. But it comes with some risks: The policy change could expose users to threats the company has previously said it might not be able to deal with, including the spread of AI-created deep fakes and other sophisticated attempts to manipulate the platform.

Tuesday, Twitter announced would relax its ban on issue ads, saying “cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation about important issues.” Twitter added that it would “expand the political advertising we allow in the coming weeks,” with a commitment to share “more details as this work progresses.” The company said its advertising policies in the future would resemble those of other media, including television.

Political advertising has never been a significant source of revenue for the company, it did less than $3 million of political ads in 2018, the year before the ban went into effect. But Musk needs all the revenue he can find.

Since his takeover of the company in October, numerous brands have halted their advertising on Twitter amid fears that Musk’s approach to content moderation could lead to ads appearing alongside the speech of hate and other inflammatory content. In November, when the company suffered mass layoffs to cut costs, Musk claimed that Twitter was losing $4 million a day.

Musk, who has previously expressed his dislike of advertising in general, has sought to improve Twitter’s financial position by launching a controversial subscription option to pay for a verified account, among other payment perks. But advertising has historically accounted for nearly all of Twitter’s revenue, and replacing it could take a long time.

Welcoming paid-topic advocacy and political advertising to the platform once again could ease some of the effects of the advertiser revolt. It could also give new political candidates an advantage over incumbents, allowing them to increase their exposure through paid promotion.

But it could also lead to some of the unintended consequences that former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey warned about when he first announced the ad restrictions in 2019.

At the time, Dorsey said that Internet advertising is nothing like traditional forms of advertising because it allows for new ways to target people with specific messages. It also opens up new opportunities for malicious actors to use technology to game the system.

“Political ads on the Internet present entirely new challenges for civic discourse: machine learning-based micro-targeting and messaging optimization, unchecked misinformation, and deep falsification. All at increasing speed, sophistication, and overwhelming scale,” he said. said Dorsey.

Until now, Twitter’s approach to political advertising has diverged from that of Facebook, which has drawn widespread criticism for its policy of exempting political ads from fact-checking, effectively allowing politicians to lie in ads. Now Twitter’s change could create a more Facebook-like environment.

Misinformation and platform manipulation are not unique to social media or political messaging, Dorsey previously argued, but allowing money to enter the equation will complicate efforts to limit the impact of such damage.

Now, after Twitter has laid off large swaths of its staff, including those managing trust, security and content moderation, the company may be even less equipped to deal with the potential fallout.