Twitter once banned political ads. The reason was because it became about attacking the other candidates. That and many of the politicians were spreading lies as they tried to get the votes.
Now, Elon Musk has decided that X (formerly Twitter) should bring back political ads. While it’s probably more for the money grab than anything else, it means that the social media platform isn’t as safe as it used to be.
The team at X promises that things will be different this time. They talk about plans to expand safety while also fighting to prevent misleading content from showing up. Whether they can pull it off or not is a big question mark – and many feel as though it’s a mistake for the platform to reverse the ban.
After all, the ban (which went into place in 2019) was put there for a reason. It may have been the only good thing that Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s former CEO, did right. He was a firm believer that political reach should “be earned, not bought.”
This past week, X announced that “More than half a billion people from around the world gather on X to talk about their interests in real-time, and that includes elections. X enables people to directly engage on important topics with elected representatives, local or national leaders and fellow citizens.”
X wants to make sure that no one is being censored. It’s one of the reasons that led Elon Musk to acquire the company in the first place. They’ll also be hiring more people as a way to help with updating and maintaining its civic integrity policy so that people are getting the information they need, no one is being censored, but harmful content is being left off the platform.
It seems like a money grab that will end up having a negative impact on the full user experience, but time will tell. In the meantime, it’s another place for the various political candidates to spend their money.
