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Twitter bans political advertising on its platform worldwide


Hugo Stiglitz

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19 minutes ago, DaggerHorns said:

Thank god, all of you dickheads spend way too much time on message boards, the book of faces, the instant grammars and the tweeterspheres.

so long as tweeter allows porn i will continue to spend too much time on it.

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47 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

Over/under on how long before some tard starts yelling about free speech?

Or before some campaign files a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the policy.

 

Edit.  Loophole.  The President just tweets whatever imagery his campaign wishes to provide him.  It's not a paid political account, but it might as well be one at that point.

 

 

 

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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It's literally stunning to see a tech bro get such an easy decision right, but happy to see it.

 

“Correct decision” does not equal “easy decision”. Worldwide, that’s probably hundreds of millions in lost ad revenue. Regardless, I hope every other platform follows their lead.

 

Edit: scrolled like three posts down after typing this and saw that I basically quoted some right wing asshole with my quote about the lost revenue. I’m not backing away from my assumption on that, just clarifying that it came from my own drunk brain.

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36 minutes ago, SquishMitten said:

 

“Correct decision” does not equal “easy decision”. Worldwide, that’s probably hundreds of millions in lost ad revenue. Regardless, I hope every other platform follows their lead.

 

Edit: scrolled like three posts down after typing this and saw that I basically quoted some right wing asshole with my quote about the lost revenue. I’m not backing away from my assumption on that, just clarifying that it came from my own drunk brain.

Not sure what it is for twitter but for Facebook political ads are actually a tiny percentage of their ad revenue, so I’d imagine twitter is similar. 

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Yeah, I don’t remember what podcast I heard it on but Facebook did almost $17 BILLION in ad revenue for just the fourth quarter of 2018.

Facebook’s 2018 fourth-quarter earnings report for 2018 showed ad profits did not suffer. On Wednesday, Facebook reported advertising revenue at $16.6 billion for the final quarter of last year, up 30 percent year-over-year.


And Zuckerberg claims political ad revenue is only .5 percent of the total.

Zuckerberg explained “We estimate these ads from politicians will be less than 0.5% of our revenue next year.” For reference, Facebook earned $66 billion in the 12 months ending Q3 2019, so Facebook might earn around $330 million to $400 million in political ads next year.


So, yeah it’s hundreds of millions of dollars but it’s probably a drop in the bucket for Twitter just like it is for Facebook.
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18 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

Yeah, I don’t remember what podcast I heard it on but Facebook did almost $17 BILLION in ad revenue for just the fourth quarter of 2018.
 

 


And Zuckerberg claims political ad revenue is only .5 percent of the total.



So, yeah it’s hundreds of millions of dollars but it’s probably a drop in the bucket for Twitter just like it is for Facebook.

 

300 million would be 10% of Twitter's annual revenue

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Those are Facebook numbers.

My point was I don’t imagine that Twitter’s percentage of political ads is that much different from Facebook.


Political advertising represents a small portion of Twitter’s overall advertising, people familiar with the situation said. Twitter generated $2.11 billion of revenue—86% of total revenue—from advertising in the first nine months of this year.


If Twitter gets .5% of ad revenue from political ads like Facebook it’s nowhere close to losing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Facebook makes a shitton more money off ads than Twitter does but it’s still a drop in the bucket comparatively.
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11 hours ago, GRHorn said:

Interesting angle that I hadn’t heard discussed anywhere. 
 

 

 

Interesting as in nonsensical? Are you under the impression that Twitter has banned political posts by politicians or others on Twitter? They have made the decision to stop accepting paid political ads. 

Donald Trump's 60M+ followers will still get his political tweets.

Edited by Huckleberry
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So we're gonna back to the "In a World Gone Mad" guy voicing over really calm and gentle ads on network television?  Because those were so brutally honest?  

 

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47 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

Twitter has already said they made less than $3M in political ad revenue in 2018's cycle. Obviously 2020 would have been higher but it's not a hundred million or anything like that.

Why spend money running ads on twitter, when you can pay astroturfers far less to post fake shit on twitter, with a much larger reach?

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16 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

I read Twitter but I don't use it and thus am not familiar with its ToS. Does this mean if someone is 'tagging' or whatever it's called an M(peach emoji) as a political statement, it gets flagged? It isn't a sexual reference, but does it get the tweet pulled? I don't see it a lot, but I have seen it.

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1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

Why spend money running ads on twitter, when you can pay astroturfers far less to post fake shit on twitter, with a much larger reach?

 

1 hour ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

ugh.  this is totally true.  people will invent more QAnons now because of the volume it creates.

I think this was already baked in regardless of paid political advertising.

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3 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

Interesting as in nonsensical? Are you under the impression that Twitter has banned political posts by politicians or others on Twitter? They have made the decision to stop accepting paid political ads. 

Donald Trump's 60M+ followers will still get his political tweets.

I guess you missed the point. It’s ok, it happens. No political ads=bigger advantage for celebs with huge built in followings. As one of the replies states, potentially makes it easier for Kanye 2024, Oprah 2028 etc. 
 

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10 minutes ago, GRHorn said:

I guess you missed the point. It’s ok, it happens. No political ads=bigger advantage for celebs with huge built in followings. As one of the replies states, potentially makes it easier for Kanye 2024, Oprah 2028 etc. 
 

No, I didn't miss the point at all. You think that this change makes those things more likely when in fact that's a wild stretch. You think that Kanye West and Oprah Winfrey didn't already have ridiculously better reach than paid political ads on Twitter?

Alyssa Milano has better reach than paid political ads on Twitter with her "measly" 3M+ followers. Paid political ads on that platform were nearly worthless. As others on this thread have pointed out, bots and fake accounts were and are far more effective.

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I like PenAmerica's reaction: 

Quote

 

As a private platform, it is reasonable for Twitter to take the time to figure out whether and how the manifest ill consequences of micro-targeted ads can be mitigated. While political ads represent an important part of our democratic discourse, online advertising methods pose unique concerns that lawmakers, companies, and civil society are only beginning to understand, much less address. We welcome Twitter’s willingness to put responsibility above revenue in seeking to prevent its platform from misleading voters and polluting the democratic process.

“Still, we recognize that there are many unanswered questions and that this policy may have some unintended consequences, including, for example, advancing incumbents who rely less on ads. While we reserve judgement on how it may play out, we commend the effort to protect democratic deliberations and emphasize the role of ideas, language, and creativity – rather than money – as tools in the battle of ideas.”

 

The unintended consequences are a bear to manage. I am not sure anyone wants the field further tilted in favor of incumbents. 

 

https://pen.org/press-release/pen-america-cautiously-welcomes-twitter-political-ad-policy-says-more-details-needed/

Edited by washparkhorn
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