Twitter Just Did Something that Facebook Refuses to Do

Social media site Twitter has made a move that Facebook is refusing to do.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced this week that the platform is axing political ads from its site.

Facebook recently said it would not fact-check or remove ads placed by politicians, a move that has received backlash from lawmakers and employees.

In a tweet, Dorsey wrote, “We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…”

He continued, ” political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet.”

“Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money.”

According to Dorsey it would not be “credible” for Twitter to tell users it’s committed to stopping the spread of misinformation while allowing advertisers to target users with political ads just because they’ve paid Twitter to do so.

Dorsey added, “We’ll share the final policy by 11/15, including a few exceptions (ads in support of voter registration will still be allowed, for instance). We’ll start enforcing our new policy on 11/22 to provide current advertisers a notice period before this change goes into effect.”

“A final note. This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in order to address.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and have not been compensated for this article.