Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Will Show Who Pays For Ads and How Much They Spend (bloomberg.com)
Twitter will show detailed information about advertisers in an attempt to combat meddling in future elections. You will now be able to search for a Twitter account and see all the ads it has run in the past seven days. "For U.S. political advertisers, users will be able to see billing information, ad spending, demographic targeting data and the number of times tweets have been viewed," reports Bloomberg. From the report: The changes are part of Twitter's broader efforts to clean up its service after lawmakers berated the company for failing to discover Russian influence peddling through fake accounts and divisive ads during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Earlier this week, the company began requiring more authentication from users. In May, it rolled out stricter rules that require advertisers running political campaign ads for federal elections to identify themselves and certify they are located in the U.S. The company has also banned ads from accounts owned by Russia Today and Sputnik.
It got attention because of Russia meddling in US politics. Don't be obtuse.
It got attention because Hillary lost, and there had to be *some* reason for it that didn't put the blame on Hillary or the Democrats.
Along with sexism, misogyny, Bernie Sanders, Wikileaks, low information voters, women under pressure from men, and James Comey.
Hillary's comment is informative:
"I never imagined that [Putin] would have the audacity to launch a massive covert attack against our own democracy, right under our noses - and that he'd get away with it."
The Russian interference amounted to about $1.25 million per month, compared to the $1.2 billion spent by Hillary, or $617 the million spent by Trump.
But it's probably good to be able to tell who's purchasing ads in future elections.