MAKING MOVES

Spotify to Suspend Political Ads in 2020

The streaming giant said Friday that it can’t sufficiently vet political ads.

Spotify announced Friday that it would indefinitely suspend political ads on its platform because it can’t sufficiently screen them. “At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our process, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content,” the Swedish streaming giant said in a statement to Ad Age, adding, “We will reassess this decision as we continue to evolve our capabilities.” Google pledged to limit advertisers’ abilities to target users on its search engine and YouTube, while Twitter decided to eliminate political ads altogether. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has doubled-down on the platform’s decision to allow politicians to lie in ads. In an interview with Gayle King on CBS This Morning earlier this month, Zuckerberg said, “What I believe is that in a democracy, it’s really important that people can see for themselves what politicians are saying, so they can make their own judgments. And, you know, I don’t think that a private company should be censoring politicians or news.”