Twitter reverses its 2019 ban on political ads 

EVEN the casual observer these days can tell that Twitter and everything related to it is becoming the news in itself. With Elon Musk in the saddle, the world has divided up neatly into pro-Musk and anti-Musk camps. Literally everything from @elonmusk is amplified, dissected, and commented upon by the entire media universe. Until his next tweet, which then goes through the same cycle all over again.

Now there is much noise being made of late about Twitter’s move to expand the types of political advertising on the platform. In light of everything that has been happening at Twitter over the past months, it is not surprising that the conversation has spontaneously lit up and polarised everyone on yet another Twitter-related issue. Given the tone of our political conversations over the past few years, it is natural to be alarmed about political advertising on a platform with already so much political content and polarisation. But is that what Twitter is doing with their ads policy?

Proposed expansion is in fact, a good thing

If we look beyond the headlines, the fact is that Twitter is expanding its advertising policy to allow cause-based advertising on the platform. For example, ads related to education, voters’ rights, climate change, civic engagement, etc. They will now be carried after they go through a certification process. Is this not a good thing?

On its advertising policy page Twitter still clearly maintains the principle that “political message reach should be earned and not bought” on the platform. And that “ads should not have the primary goal of driving political, judicial, legislative, or regulatory outcomes”. It’s all here and here.

We are lazy and we want to be the moral police

Let me say it as it is: We are easily led by headlines. Why check for facts when the story leans so easily into a narrative that so many have already formed in their heads. That Twitter is chaotic and broken and will sacrifice all principles to bring back lost advertising revenue. The truth is that as a race we are lazy. We will not bother to go beyond the headlines, again and again.

One could argue that over time Twitter will allow all political advertising, especially as the US elections approach next year. Well, so what? Even if Twitter actually allowed political advertising, it is their business to run and we should stay out of it. How many of us know that allowing political ads would only put Twitter on par with what Meta and Google already do? The only platform that outright bans any political ads is TikTok. If we are to stand on the moral high ground, let’s have the same expectations of all platforms.

Let the market decide

Any way you look at it, Twitter is a media vehicle that competes for human attention in the same way that other social media and video streaming platforms do. Each of them has its own revenue model and bases of advertisers. They all operate with a set of rules or principles on what type of advertising (or advertisers) they will accept.

Twitter has a large base of engaged users and it has every right to monetise them. If it goes out of hand, the regulators will step in and do their job.

A big issue in this debate is the polarising leadership style of Elon Musk. And while the jury is still out on the long-term effects of his early decisions at Twitter, it is clear that the platform is still humming with less than a third of its employees pre-acquisition. That’s no small feat.

On a separate but related note, how long will it take for legacy businesses to finally act on what they already know: that organisations with tens of thousands of people only create mountains of unnecessary work and slow everything down. What kinds of organisations would these businesses build if they started over?

Here are some quick advertising-related facts about Twitter:

• The platform accounts for less than 0.5 per cent share of global advertising spend
• It is only one-seventh the size of Facebook in reach and one-tenth of TikTok in time spent
• Twitter users are young: 40 per cent of them are below 30 years of age, 70 per cent are under-50
• Twitter users are educated: 60 per cent of them have some college education 

Gautam Kiyawat is professor of management practice at ESSEC Asia Pacific