Twitter Political Ad Ban Goes Into Effect

On Friday, Twitter enacted its ban on political advertisements on its platform.

In late October, Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey announced the decision citing concern over the challenges internet political ads present to civic discourse.

Dorsey tweeted out the announcement saying, "we've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought." He added, "A 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."

The company defines political content as content "that references a candidate, political party, elected or appointed government official, election, referendum, ballot measure, legislation, regulation, directive, or judicial outcome."

Advertisements promoted by news publishers that meet a specific criteria, will be exempt. For example the publication's website must have a minimum of 200,000 monthly visitors in the U.S. 

Twitter's decision comes as other platforms are trying to figure out their own way to handle political ads. Google recently announced it would stop allowing highly targeted political ads. And Facebook is under fire for its policy, which critics say effectively allows politicians or political groups to spread misinformation without retribution

Additional reporting from Newsy affiliate CNN.