Twitter Inc. said it plans to expand the political advertising it allows on the social-media platform after banning most political ads in 2019, in the latest policy change by new owner Elon Musk.
The company also said Tuesday that it is relaxing its policy for cause-based ads in the U.S. Such ads call for people to take action, educate and raise awareness in connection with the following categories: civic engagement, economic growth, environmental stewardship and social-equity causes.
In the coming weeks, the company said it would “align our advertising policy with that of TV and other media outlets,” according to tweets from the Twitter Safety account. It didn’t specify what that means and said it would “share more details as this work progresses.” Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Twitter largely banned political ads in November 2019, taking the opposite approach of social-media competitor Facebook at the time. Jack Dorsey, who was then chief executive officer of Twitter, said of the decision, “We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
The policy came with some exceptions that allowed for ads in support of some politics-related topics such as voter registration. At the time, political advertising represented only a small portion of Twitter’s overall advertising revenue.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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