Constraining political advertisements is constraining democracy
Last October, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, announced that Twitter will be the first advertising platform to permanently ban political advertisements. His idea is that political influence must be earned and not bought. This action has been received enthusiastically by many people worldwide. Immediately afterwards, the pressure on Google and Facebook began to increase to follow this example and to completely remove political advertisements from their platforms.
With political advertisements we often get the image of fake news articles intended to defame the opposite party and manipulate people. Spreading these types of message is of course harmful to our democracy, but what Twitter is doing now is actually much worse. I believe that Twitter’s new policy is a very bad thing for democracy and freedom of expression.
With online advertisements it is possible to reach many people with your message for relatively little money. For a few euros per day you can let thousands of people watch a video of your candidate or an infographic with your party program. While a local newspaper advertisement can easily cost hundreds or even thousands of euros and a television spot is completely unaffordable. This is ideal for small and unknown parties who do not have the means to pay for expensive television and / or radio advertisements. For example in my country (Netherlands) clever usage of online media has earned DENK and Forum for Democracy a place in the Lower House.
In other words, by imposing restrictions on the use of advertising resources by political parties, Twitter raises the threshold for new political movements to participate in the democratic system. They stimulate a situation where we go back to a time where only large established parties have access to mass media and it is almost impossible for smaller parties to spread their message. This is why I think it is very unfortunate that the platform, which was one of the biggest catalysts for the democratic revolutions in the Middle East in 2011, is now trying to curb democracy.
Moreover, the term “political advertisements” is very subjective. For example, imagine an advertisement from a local nature association that shows people a video about the consequences of the municipality’s environment policies and calls on them to sign a petition. municipality. This advertisement is designed to alter the opinion of people and they are called upon to take action against the local government. Yet this ad is not from a political party. Can this advertisement be regarded as a political advertisement? I think there will be a big gray area in the ad approval process where ads are allowed or excluded based on the random interpretation of the rules for political advertising by a Twitter employee.
It would have been better if Twitter would have invested in the development of algorithms or the training of teams to recognize and ban political fake news advertisements instead of completely blocking political advertising. Or they could have learned from their colleague Facebook. For years, Facebook has struggled with its image as a platform used for political manipulation. In response, Facebook has taken a number of steps to make it more difficult to apply political manipulation without completely excluding political advertisements.
With every political advertisement you can see which company paid for it. In addition, it is possible to see for each page what kind of advertisements they run and for political parties it is even stated how much money is spent each month. Finally, the company is now experimenting with adding links to independent fact checks for every political advertisement. In my view, these measures are a nice compromise on the one hand, to make it possible for everyone to share his or her political message and, on the other hand, to ensure that democratic transparency and integrity are preserved.
In summary, it is simply undemocratic and very naive to try to stop political online advertisements. Ad platforms should not try to block political ads, but only try to regulate them.
