SAN FRANCISCO – Elon Musk’s platform X, formerly Twitter, will accept political advertising again for the first time in about four years, reported German news agency dpa.
The ban introduced in October 2019 is to first be lifted in the United States, according to a blog entry today.
Former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey had justified the ban by saying that political reach had to be earned and not bought. X now refers to a commitment by the service to free speech.
At the same time, the platform emphasised that there would be some rules for the paid dissemination of political messages.
It will be forbidden to place false or misleading information, for example. This includes misrepresentations aimed at undermining public confidence in the legitimacy of elections.
These restrictions could set limits on how ex-president Donald Trump and his supporters use X in the 2024 presidential campaign.
Despite all the facts, Trump continues to claim that the last election was “stolen” from him.
Musk has reactivated Trump’s long-banned account on the service. So far, he has only used it once, to publish a police mug shot, the first one ever made of an indicted former president.
Otherwise, Trump prefers to be active on his own social media network, Truth Social. The former president currently has only 6.4 million subscribers there – while at X, he managed to retrieve his more than 80 million Twitter followers. – Bernama, August 30, 2023
