It was the announcement everyone wanted to hear from Mark Zuckerberg, but instead it came from Twitter’s chief executive officer Jack Dorsey: There will be no more political advertising promoting candidates or hot-button policy issues.
To boot, Dorsey’s announcement that Twitter would stop allowing political ads was timed to coincide with Facebook releasing its earnings on Wednesday evening.
The news left Northeastern professor David Lazer questioning the tech giant’s true motives. Is Twitter, which likely will see minimal financial impact from this decision compared to, say, Facebook, actually trying to solve a problem, or merely making a statement?