Spotify told advertising news websiteAd Ageon Friday that it will shut down political ads early next year.
More than 130 million people use the app with ads on and the list of Spotify’s current political advertisers includes the Republican National Committee and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
“At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our process, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content,” Spotify said in a statement toAd Age. “We will reassess this decision as we continue to evolve our capabilities.”
In October, Zuckerberg’s policy was scrutinized Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whogrilledthe Facebook CEO over what critics say is an overly relaxed policy.
During a House Financial Services Committee hearing, a clip of which has gone viral, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez asked the Facebook leader if the company would work to remove political ads with false information.
Zuckerberg responded, saying, “I think lying is bad. I think if you were to run an ad that had a lie that would be bad. That’s different from it being… from it… in our position the right thing to do to prevent, uhh, your contestants or people in an election from seeing that you had lied…”
“So, you won’t take down lies or you will take down lies?” Ocasio-Cortez cut in. “I think that’s just a pretty simple yes or no.”
Ad Age reports a source told the publication political ads aren’t a big money-maker for Spotify.
While social media companies grapple with how to handle fact-checking political ads heading into an already heated election year, sites like Twitter have permanently shut down political ads on their pages.
“We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced in October ina lengthy threadexplaining the decision.
“This isn’t about free expression,” Dorsey said, warning that all internet communication will have to deal with the issue of fact checking information. “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. It’s worth stepping back in order to address.”
source: people.com
