On second thought...

My initial reaction was favorable to Jack Dorsey's decision to ban political ads on Twitter, but in PJ Media Tyler O'Neill causes me to rethink.

If every news outlet will be able to advertise and be able to "promote" certain stories with a political bias, that could be an effective work-around of the new rules on political issue ads. But in order to prevent this, Twitter will either have to prevent news outlets from advertising or prevent them from promoting political stories. That again raises the issue: what counts as political?

...If political ads are banned on Twitter, what about right-leaning or left-leaning news outlets and their often biased stories on political issues? This is likely to be a thorny gray area for Twitter's new rules.

...Paid ads can perform an important public service by alerting voters who are obsessed with the big national issues to the existence of local candidates and causes.

...Dorsey announced that Twitter would not just ban candidate ads but also issue ads, by which he means advertising on issues Twitter deems to be political or of national importance. That raises the thorny question: "What makes an issue political?"

...Social media allows politics at a larger scale — but these massive movements are very different from local and state elections, where political and issue ads are most necessary.

...Dorsey rightly admitted that critics will claim the new policy helps incumbents. People who hold political office have a huge advantage over candidates who would challenge them for their seats. Voters likely already know who the incumbent is, while challengers have a long uphill climb to just make themselves known to voters.

...Dorsey had many reasons to impose this kind of blanket ban, but he decided to frame the issue as one of moral superiority over Facebook. He suggested that Facebook's policy of allowing all candidates to buy ads undercuts the platform's efforts to stop spreading misleading information. While this may be true, Facebook has decided not to assert itself as the arbiter of truth in politics — a wise and humble decision in America's politically-charged culture.

Read more here.