This is just as big: The ban on political advertising also covers issue ads:
.@jack pushes back on a Facebook talking point here about incumbency. He also implicitly notes that being able to "pay for reach" favors incumbency in another way, which is that rich incumbents can pay more for additional "speech"
And now, moments later, Twitter's stock is being hammered 
More on this here: cnn.com/2019/10/30/tec…
Twitter's new policy gives it the responsibility to decide what's political and what's not. That'll be hard, but perhaps no more difficult than the other content moderation challenges it already has.
As Twitter tries to thread this needle, Sec. 230 will be as important as ever.
As Twitter tries to thread this needle, Sec. 230 will be as important as ever.
Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg is opening Facebook's earnings call by doubling down on his stance on political ads. Says he'll "continue" to weigh whether to accept political ads but so far he's landed on allowing them.
Zuckerberg says political ads will account for less than 0.5 percent of Facebook's revenue next year. "The FTC fine was more than 10x bigger than this."
Unclear if he's aware of the Twitter announcement -- he hasn't addressed it directly (yet).
Unclear if he's aware of the Twitter announcement -- he hasn't addressed it directly (yet).
Twitter’s CFO says the company made less than $3 million from political ads in the 2018 cycle.
So, just doing some back of the napkin math — we don’t know what Facebook’s internal revenue projections look like, but we do have last year’s figures.
Assuming FB revenue is similar or higher next year, 0.5 percent is at least $279 million. Not nothing
Assuming FB revenue is similar or higher next year, 0.5 percent is at least $279 million. Not nothing
Meanwhile, even though Twitter says it got less than $3m in the 2018 midterms, what does that figure look like when you add in issue ads? The company isn’t disclosing further figures but would be interesting to try to find out.
