Twitter to refuse all political ads

Twitter will no longer run any political advertising promoting candidates or particular hot-button issues, CEO Jack Dorsey announced Wednesday.

The announcement comes amid ongoing controversy over rival Facebook’s decision to allow misinformation in political advertising, a move decried by top Democrats over recent weeks.

Dorsey said Wednesday afternoon that Twitter’s stance from now on will be that “political message reach should be earned, not bought.”

“We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally,” Dorsey wrote in a Twitter thread. “A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.”

Twitter’s announcement comes as Facebook, a much larger rival and dominant player in digital advertising, faces a whirlwind of controversy over its own policies concerning political ads.

The controversy began earlier this month after Facebook declined to remove an ad from President Trump’s campaign attacking former Vice President Joe Biden, a top political rival, that multiple Democratic contenders noted contained ungrounded allegations.

Facebook, though, says it will not fact-check political ads from public officials or candidates.