The mercurial Elon Musk is at it again.
X, formerly Twitter, will as of Tuesday no longer ban political ads from the platform, citing a commitment to free expression. The decision reverses Twitter’s previous ban on all political ads, which dates to October 2019. Then-CEO Jack Dorsey said of the move that “we believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
Well, they can be bought again. There are some caveats, though.
According to X’s blog post Tuesday, the company will “continue to apply specific policies to paid-for promoted political posts. This will include prohibiting the promotion of false or misleading content, including false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election, while seeking to preserve free and open political discourse.”
The company also said it will provide a “global advertising transparency center” that will let anyone review political posts being promoted on X and will integrate a “robust screening processes to ensure only eligible groups and campaigns are able to advertise.”
Specifically during elections, X said it maintains its Civic Integrity Policy, which prohibits manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes. The company is now bolstering the policy to “make sure we strike the right balance between tackling the most harmful types of content — those that could intimidate or deceive people into surrendering their right to participate in a civic process — and not censoring political debate.”
Alongside all of this, the company announced they were expanding its safety and elections teams “to focus on combating manipulation, surfacing inauthentic accounts and closely monitoring the platform for emerging threats.”
