SAN FRANCISCO -- Twitter is banning all political advertising from its service, saying social media companies give advertisers an unfair advantage in proliferating highly targeted, misleading messages.
"While Internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions," Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey said Wednesday in a series of tweets announcing the new policy.
Facebook has taken fire since it disclosed earlier in October that it will not fact-check ads by politicians or their campaigns, which could allow them to lie freely. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Congress last week that politicians have the right to free speech on Facebook.
The issue suddenly arose in September when Twitter, along with Facebook and Google, refused to remove a misleading video ad from President Donald Trump's campaign that targeted former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading Democratic presidential candidate.
In response, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another presidential hopeful, ran her own ad on Facebook taking aim at Zuckerberg. The ad falsely claimed that Zuckerberg endorsed Trump for reelection, acknowledging the deliberate falsehood as necessary to make a point.
Critics have called on Facebook to ban all political ads. These include CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who recently called the company's policy of allowing lies "absolutely ludicrous" and advised the social media giant to sit out the 2020 election until it can figure out something better.
Google and Facebook did not have immediate comments on Twitter's policy change.
Twitter's policy will start on Nov. 22.
Meanwhile, Facebook announced Wednesday that it had removed three networks of accounts it says are associated with Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin-linked businessman whom U.S. authorities indicted over interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
The networks -- which included more than 170 Facebook accounts, pages, groups, as well as Instagram accounts, with nearly 1 million followers overall -- targeted eight African nations with messages intended to bolster Russia's political and commercial priorities. Some of the images featured President Vladimir Putin alongside African leaders.
Facebook linked the coordinated influence operations to Prigozhin, who is known as "Putin's chef" because of his politically connected catering business. He funded and oversaw the Internet Research Agency, based in St. Petersburg, that inundated Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms with messages designed to help elect Trump, discourage black voters and inflame U.S. political discourse, authorities have said.
Information for this article was contributed by Rachel Lerman and Barbara Ortutay of The Associated Press and by Craig Timberg and Isaac Stanley-Becker of The Washington Post.
Business on 10/31/2019