Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel says unlike Facebook, Snap Inc fact-checks political ads

tech2 News StaffNov 19, 2019 13:21:20 IST

During the testimony in front of the US Congress last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company did not want to get involved in verifying the truth of political claims. This immediately got the company under fire for its policies on political ads.

Hours after that, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that starting 22 November, Twitter would ban political ads. Twitter recently also laid out a plan for the political ad ban.

Now, Snap Inc CEO Evan Spiegel has joined the chorus of voices in support of fact-checking politicians. Spiegel has said that his company has been fact-checking political ads as well.

Snapchat logo

“We subject all advertising to review, including political advertising. And I think what we try to do is create a place for political ads on our platform, especially because we reach so many young people and first-time voters, we want them to be able to engage with the political conversation, but we don’t allow things like misinformation to appear in that advertising,” Spiegel told CNBC. 

Notably, though, Twitter and Snapchat’s political ad businesses are way smaller than Facebook’s. According to a report by The Verge, throughout the 2018 midterm season, "Twitter only brought in $3 million with political ads", and "2020 Democratic candidates have only spent around $200,000 on Snapchat," says a report by The Open Secrets. 

Whereas, according to a recent report by TechCrunch, "Facebook earned $66 billion in the 12 months ending Q3 2019, so Facebook might earn around $330 million to $400 million in politician ads next year."

Last month, Zuckerberg said that Facebook will not remove political ads from candidates — even if false — because he believes voters deserve unfiltered access to the words of politicians. He said exceptions would be made for political ads that encouraged violence or seek to suppress voting.