On Wednesday, October 30, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that the social media platform would ban political advertising.
"This isn't about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today's democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle," Jack Dorsey wrote in a statement.
The ban on political tweets will take effect from Friday, November 15, with an exception made on tweets that encourage voter registration.
The company termed political advertising as information that refers to an election or candidate or one that advocates for or against "legislative issues of national importance," like healthcare, taxes or immigration.
In Kenya, politicians take to the microblogging platform to share information on policies the government is acting on.
A lot of information on legislation, policy implementation and execution by officers in government especially MPs, CSs, the deputy president, and the president are shared for reach on Twitter.
In a series of tweets, Dorsey argued that "political message reach should be earned, not bought."This means that Kenyan politicians will no longer be able to pay so that their messages on policy implementation and even political campaigns can net a wide audience.
Dorsey went on and stated that "a political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people."
The microblogging platform holds the belief that the decisions made by people on Twitter to follow, tweet or retweet a politician or a tweet by a politician should not be compromised by money.
