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Twitter Will Show Who Pays For Ads and How Much They Spend (bloomberg.com) 111

Posted by BeauHD from the transparency-rules dept.
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.
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Twitter Will Show Who Pays For Ads and How Much They Spend More

Twitter Will Show Who Pays For Ads and How Much They Spend

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  • Thanks Trump (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @07:36PM (#56876874)
    Just another in a long line of longstanding issues that got zero coverage before the media started pretending that "Trump did it" or that it happened because of Trump.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Gravis Zero ( 934156 )

      It got attention because of Russia meddling in US politics. Don't be obtuse.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        No one would have cared that Russia meddled if the "right person" had gotten elected. To date, no one STILL cares about the meddling that Clinton did

      • Thanks Trump (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @08:09PM (#56876952) Homepage Journal

        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 [fivethirtyeight.com], 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.

        • 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.

          That's a cute way of comparing totals to monthly amount to disguise the total amount. But your numbers suggest (once per month is totaled) that ~2% of Trump's spending by Russia.

          Also, while money is money, the ability to spend money in certain areas is limited by US entities. That's not even counting that people saluting a flag are often underpaid.

          All tha

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Stop trying to polarize the debate and take a calm, rational look at it. There is hard evidence of Russian interference in US democracy. There is also a solid argument to be made that Clinton was not a good candidate. Both those things can be true and have a significant impact.

          • Stop trying to polarize the debate and take a calm, rational look at it. There is hard evidence of Russian interference in US democracy. There is also a solid argument to be made that Clinton was not a good candidate. Both those things can be true and have a significant impact.

            But life is so much easier if you can just say Trump=Good, Clinton=Bad. (Or vice versa).

      • Can someone please tell me what form that "Russian meddling" took? All I've seen is that they've advertised. Which is what the candidates and various pressure groups and special interest groups also did.

        Is advertising magical? Does advertising somehow exert mind-control on voters? When done by Russians, I mean.

        Not when done by agribusinesses or political parties or the AFL-CIO or the U.S. Army or any of the many siblings of the Military-Industrial Complex. That advertising is completely non-magical.

        • Is advertising magical? Does advertising somehow exert mind-control on voters?

          Facebook said the same thing at first, then they looked at how it changed how people posted. Psychological profiles were built on people and then applied the correct pressure.

          American voters can't be fooled into voting badly.

          They absolutely can and are regularly. The entire republican platform is built on that concept.

          • They absolutely can and are regularly. The entire republican platform is built on that concept.

            Advertising works, well enough. Well enough to pay for it, at least sometimes, for some advertisers. Is anyone surprised?

            As for political parties fooling people, it's not like the Republicans (FTFY) have a lock on it. Have you heard of the Democrats?

            • your either ignorant of the type of "advertising" they were doing or you are being disingenuous about it. either way, stfu and fuck off. ;)

              • your either ignorant of the type of "advertising" they were doing or you are being disingenuous about it. either way, stfu and fuck off. ;)

                Thank you for the advice, but no thanks. (Also, brief pretend paranoiac interlude: George Soros didn't get his money's worth from you today. Or were the spelling and punctuation errors deliberate, as part of your on-line persona?)

                The kind of weird-ass stuff TDS suffers would post for free? Yeah. I'm aware. (The TDS-R strain of Trump Derangement Syndrome.) At least, I think it was sincere. I meet equally deranged people IRL, so it's certainly possible.

                So, what's your point?

                I don't expect beer or pi

  • Cool. Now show who has already PAID for ads.

    • Cool. Now show who has already PAID for ads.

      It would not do you much good. Up until now even foreigners could buy campaign ads in the US with impunity. People who have tried to trace money flowing into PACs have basically hit a wall of shell companies and obscure financial service companies with unclear ownership. Now Google, Facebook, Twitter et-al are checking only that ads are paid for by a US entity. I'm willing to bet that all that will change is that from now on the last entity the money is routed through before it ends up in Google, Facebook a

      • I'd mod this up if I had points. That's exactly what they were doing anyway. Paying people in the US to pay for ads using made up group or company names.
    • They don't have that information from before so they can't release it.

  • Memes next? (Score:3)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @08:13PM (#56876966) Journal
    When to meme is too politically funny will the artist have to ID themselves and prove they are located in the U.S?

  • Information like this (Score:3)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @08:50PM (#56877052)

    Something called "the Committee for Government Healthiness" spent money. Thanks Twitter. We still don't know anything about this group or whether they go by 100 other names.

  • Then I'd be sorely tempted to short $TWTR. Advertisers do not like customers knowing their being advertised to, at all.

    That's not how advertising (generally) works.

  • Create a bunch of fake accounts. Each one is a shell for one and only one ad.

    • Create a bunch of fake accounts. Each one is a shell for one and only one ad.

      Well, some of those names Twitter has provided from the Yoyodyne Corporation look strangely familiar:

      Vlad Barnett
      Vlad Bigboote
      Vlad Camp
      Vlad Careful Walker
      Vlad Chief Crier
      Vlad Cooper
      Vlad Coyote
      Vlad Edwards
      Vlad Fat Eating
      Vlad Fish
      Vlad Fledgling
      Vlad Gomez
      Vlad Grim
      Vlad Guardian
      Vlad Icicle Boy
      Vlad Jones
      Vlad Joseph
      Vlad Kim Chi
      Vlad Lee
      Vlad LittleVlad
      Vlad Many Jars
      Vlad Milton
      Vlad Mud Head
      Vlad Nephew
      Vlad Nolan
      Vlad O'Connor
      Vlad Omar
      Vlad Parrot
      Vlad Rajeesh
      Vlad Ready to Fly
      Vlad Repeat Dan

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