October 26th, 2017 - Fort Russ News -
- Agencies - - by Samer Hussein -
Social networking site Twitter has banned RT and Sputnik, another Russian news outlet, from placing any advertisements.
The reason behind the controversial decision lies within the accusation that both outlets “attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government.”
The reason behind the controversial decision lies within the accusation that both outlets “attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government.”
The California-based company said it will give away $1.9 million, earned in advertising revenue from RT since 2011.
The money will reportedly be donated to research into the civic impact of Twitter, as well as to combat “fake news and propaganda.”
“Early this year, the US intelligence community named RT and Sputnik as implementing state-sponsored Russian efforts to interfere with and disrupt the 2016 presidential election, which is not something we want on Twitter,” Twitter said in its statement.
“Twitter has made the policy decision to off-board advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, effective immediately,” the company further added.
Before making its decision public, Twitter messaged RT directly, saying the decision was made so that the people would “feel safe” when they use the site.
The Twitter, however, failed to explain, how banning RT advertisement would make people safe, given that the microblogging site is known to be infested with spammers, bots, stalkers, copyright violators, bullies, etc.. many of whom have already brought a lot of inconvenience to the private lives of several users of the site.
“At Twitter we believe in freedom of expression and in speaking truth to power. We also want to ensure that people feel safe when they interact with our site, and that advertisers bring value to our users,” Twitter said in its statement wrote.
It shall be noted the ban was given a week before Twitter management is due to testify before a US House committee over its role in supposed Russian meddling in the last year US presidential election. The company staff will reportedly appear alongside Facebook and Google employees.
RT has already responded to Twitter's provocation, saying it never violated any rules while advertising on the site, nor has ever used any bots or spamming tools, while assuring that RT has always been a reliable partner of the social networking sites that has never spread any sort of deliberate misinformation and has in no possible way influenced the last years’s presidential election.
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