Twitter announced new restrictions to its ad policies that restrict the publishing of sponsored political and issue tweets. The social platform set these rules for the US only, in light of social media’s recent issues with the bad actors exploiting looser measures since the 2016 presidential campaign. After Twitter and Facebook announced restrictions to these types of ads earlier this summer, news organizations protested the decisions. According to Axios, Twitter has lifted the policies for news organizations and journalists with 200,000 monthly unique visitors, exempting those with searchable archives and contact info available. Fringe and sensationalist organizations, as well as publishers of primarily UGC and advocates for single issues are not exempt. These rules also can affect brands: a representative from Twitter confirmed to The Drum, “Brands will fall under the policy if they are promoting content that is specific to the policy.” Brands can become exempt, according to Twitter’s blog, but have been required to apply for certification to promote on a range of topics. The ‘evolving’ list of what Twitter called "legislative issues of importance" include: abortion, civil rights, climate change, guns, healthcare, immigration, national security, social security, taxes, and trade. Twitter also tested out a new feature recently, allowing certain users to receive a curated list of accounts to unfollow. Even though the feature hasn’t been confirmed as an update to the platform, Twitter refused to clarify the status of brands’ being impacted by this test. // Featured in this article Twitter Twitter is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages, known as "tweets."
Twitter has introduced new policies to "issue ads" in the US, such as political ads and advertisements attempting to influence legislation. The move comes following recent issues with bad actors after the 2016 presidential campaign, however previous changes to the restrictions to these type of ads by both Twitter and Facebook came under criticism from publishers. In a statement on its website, Google said it was "working closely with publishers around the world to help them understand how their content is being used for malicious purposes. Twitter's "legislative issues of importance" include: abortion, civil rights, climate change, guns, healthcare, immigration, national security, social security, taxes, and trade.