Twitter says it will ease up on its 3-year-old ban on political advertising, the latest change by Elon Musk as he tries to pump up revenue after purchasing the social media platform last year.
The company tweeted late Tuesday that "we're relaxing our ads policy for cause-based ads in the US."
"We also plan to expand the political advertising we permit in the coming weeks," the company said from its Twitter Safety account.
Twitter banned all political advertising in 2019, reacting to growing concern about misinformation spreading on social media.
At the time, then-CEO Jack Dorsey said that while internet ads are powerful and effective for commercial advertisers, "that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions."
The latest move appears to represent a break from that policy, which had banned ads by candidates, political parties, or elected or appointed government officials.
Political advertising made up a sliver of Twitter's overall revenue, accounting for less than $3 million of total spending for the 2018 U.S. midterm election.
In reversing the ban, Twitter said that "cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics" and that the change will align the platform's advertising policy with those of "TV and other media outlets," without providing further details.
Facebook in March 2021 lifted its ban on political and social issue ads that was put in place after the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Musk bills himself as a free-speech warrior and bought Twitter because he apparently believed it wasn't living up to its potential as a free speech platform. But the billionaire Tesla CEO has been forced to make huge cost cuts and scramble to find more sources of revenue to justify the $44 billion purchase.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More