As we head into the new decade, many social media and tech companies are feeling apprehensive about the polarizing 2020 election and what it means for their ad revenue from political ads. Many companies are banning all political ads while others limit how users information can be used. Of course, the most notorious decision was made by Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg who came under fire for telling Congress that the social media giant will allow political ads without fact checking them.
Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) is the most recent company to take political ads off their platform. The music and podcast streaming service is used by 14 million users, but this decision will only affect the U.S.. Spotify has only sold political ads in America. Up till now, political entities including the Bernie Sanders campaign and the Republican National Committee have been allowed to advertise on the site, but political ads make up only a small portion of Spotify's ad revenue. The vast majority of that revenue comes from ads for movies and shows.
Spotify's moratorium will cover ads from political organizations, Super PACs, nonprofits, elected and appointed officials, and political parties themselves. This includes content meant to advocate for or against legislative and judicial outcomes and political entities. However, it doesn't include ads embedded in podcasts which will still be subject to Spotify's content policies.
The company has made it clear that this decision may not be permanent. In a statement to Ad Age, they said "At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our process, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content. We will reassess this decision as we continue to evolve our capabilities." The company intends to improve its tech before allowing political ads on their platform.
Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) has arguably gone farther than any other platform in their policies regarding political ads. CEO Jack Dorsey announced in a tweet thread that there will be a permanent ban on political ads. "We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought," Dorsey wrote. He expressed a reluctance to allow political messages to proliferate because of "highly optimized and targeted" paid ads, a concern repeated by many. He also spoke about the danger of misinformation and deep-fakes being spread. In his thread, Dorsey mocked other platforms who claim to fight misinformation but allow politicians who pay for ads to " say whatever they want!" Most took this as a jab against Facebook. As Dorsey put it, "This isn't about free expression. This is about paying for reach", and political ads bring "significant risks to politics"
One critic of Twitter's ad policy is the president's campaign manager. Brad Parscale, Trump's political campaign manager said of the ban, "This is yet another attempt to silence conservatives, since Twitter knows President Trump has the most sophisticated online program ever known"
"Our policy is that we do not fact-check politicians' speech, and the reason for that is that we believe that in a democracy, it is important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying," Zuckerberg told a U.S. House committee. Critics of this decision aren't hard to find, even within the company itself. 250 Facebook employees signed onto an open letter calling for stronger regulations on political ads. In a company with 40,000 employees, 250 signatures may not seem like a lot, but Facebook employees are usually very discreet about internal workings. These employees called for political ads to be held to the same standards as all other ads, meaning fact checking. They fear the platform could be weaponized by politicians.
Many tech insiders see this decision as more complicated than a simple decision to allow or deny these ads. CEO of The Trade Desk, Jeff Green called companies' decision to block all political ads "a huge mistake". Tech executive Jeff Berman told NPR that the ads themselves are not the problem but rather "The ability to micro-target to pick exactly the people with the right backgrounds, the right interests, where they live, who they engage with, et cetera." According to Berman, these politicians could "go from phishing with a dragnet to phishing with a spear" by using micro-targeting.
One company addressing micro-targeting directly is Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL). The site no longer allows advertisers to micro-target users according to their political affiliations, information based on the searches they make on Google and YouTube. From now on, advertisers can only use broad, general categories like age and gender, and postal codes. Moving forward, it's likely that more sites will ban or limit political ads.