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Early this year, after Elon Musk had finalized his purchase of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the Tesla CEO announced that it would relax its ban on political ads, which had been implemented in 2019.
Well, now, it appears that Musk has made good on that promise and has announced that X will not only allow the ads but is promising transparency and “robust screening processes.”
From Deadline:
“Building on our commitment to free expression, we are also going to allow political advertising,” said a blog post today by X Safety called ‘Supporting people’s right to accurate and safe political discourse on X’ that outlined its plans.
“Starting in the U.S., we’ll continue to apply specific policies to paid-for promoted political posts. This will include prohibiting the promotion of false or misleading content, including false or misleading information intended to undermine public confidence in an election, while seeking to preserve free and open political discourse. We’ll also provide a global advertising transparency center so that everyone can review political posts being promoted on X, in addition to robust screening processes to ensure only eligible groups and campaigns are able to advertise,” the post read.
It noted that “more than half a billion people from around the world gather on X to talk about their interests in real-time, and that includes elections. X enables people to directly engage on important topics with elected representatives, local or national leaders and fellow citizens.”
And it said that during elections, “X works to get in front of a range of tactics that people use to target the process. To do this we hire the right people, update our policies and evolve our product.”
So what it seems like is that Musk’n’nem are allowing political ads again just in time for the 2024 presidential race. Musk, who is more of a political and social right-winger than he likes to admit, could be trying to use X to bolster political support for Donald Trump, or whatever other Republican looks like they might be next in line if Trump’s legal issues get in the way of him getting his orangey-rust dust all over the Oval Office furniture once again.
But at least he’s promising not to allow X to become the cesspool of election fraud propaganda and political misinformation Twitter was when Trump and Trump acolytes like Marjorie Taylor Green were allowed to run wild on the platform and lie all they wanted.
Although come to think of it, all of that was going on while Twitter was still banning political ads, so who knows?
