Twitter on Tuesday said the expansion of its political ads policy and transparency approach will include India, Australia and all European Union member states as it looks to enforce stricter policies for political advertisers and providing clear, transparent disclosure for all ads on the platform.
Twitter has been under fire in India after after CEO Jack Dorsey defied a rare government summons to attend a Parliamentary hearing on safeguarding citizen rights on such platforms. BJP‘s social media volunteers have accused Twitter of suppressing right-wing voices on the platform.
In May 2018, Twitter had launched its Political Campaigning Policy in the United States to provide clear insight into how the platform defines political content and who is advertising political content on Twitter. In conjunction, the platform launched the Ads Transparency Center (ATC). The ATC allows anyone across the globe to view ads that have been served on Twitter, with even more details on political campaigning ads, including ad spend and targeting demographics.
In the Ads Transparency Center, anyone can view ads that have run on Twitter within the last 7 days from any Twitter handle. If an ad is reported and taken down from Twitter, it will be archived in the Ads Transparency Center within approximately 24 hours. If the account was suspended, Tweets will not be shown in the Ads Transparency Center. The same applies to deleted Twitter accounts and Tweets.
For India political advertisers that fall under the Political Campaigning Policy, people will be able to see further details, including billing information, ad spend, and impressions data per Tweet. Additionally, Twitter will be showing demographic targeting data for the ads being served, both intended by the advertiser and actually delivered by Twitter.
In addition to the information being shared within the Ads Transparency Center itself, Twitter is making it clearer who is advertising Indian political campaign content on the platform by including a visual label and disclaimer information on promoted content from certified accounts. This will allow people to easily identify political campaign ads and to know who paid for them.
Enforcement of this policy will begin on 11 March, after which only certified advertisers will be allowed to run political campaigning ads on the service. Political advertisers must apply now for certification and go through every step of the process.
Twitter said it deeply respects the integrity of the election process and are committed to providing a service that fosters and facilitates free and open democratic debate.
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