| You make a good point about how to actually enforce this. Apparently, Washington state did ban political ads on Facebook. As a testing ground for such a policy, the results haven't been great. https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/31/20941917/twitter-politic... HOWEVER, this appears to me as a regulation failure. We know Facebook doesn't want the ban, so their motivation to comply is limited to the clarity and sharpness of the teeth of the legislation. And they aren't very sharp. Regarding: > Twitter hasn’t actually banned political ads, they’ve just used a definition that makes it easy for them to claim to have done so. I don't agree with painting Twitter as just wanting to "claim" they have done so. They appear to be making a true good-faith effort. Check out their policy: https://business.twitter.com/en/help/ads-policies/prohibited... https://business.twitter.com/en/help/ads-policies/restricted... > Is an ad for a climate change organization a political ad? How about an ad for UBI? An ad for a local Catholic Church? An ad about farming subsidies? An ad for birth control? For each of these examples, there is a clear way to apply their policy based on the content of the message. Is it perfect? Probably not. Will it totally kneecap political ads (by 80%+)? I believe it will. > All of these are one step away from direct advertisements for candidates and are very political topics for many people. I would argue that your point is too academic. If political ads are reduced by 80%, even though there are still political-adjacent ads (that aren't funded by a political group and don't reference a candidate or initiative), then the policy would be a wild success. |