Twitter Introduces US Election Labels, Political Campaigning Policy

Twitter has introduced new badges that would label political candidates for this year’s U.S. midterm general election. It has also announced stricter guidelines for political ads.

Earlier this week, Twitter announced via a blog post that it is introducing U.S. election labels that will serve as the verified badges of candidates. According to the social networking service, these new labels will contain relevant information about a candidate, such as the office the candidate is running for.

The labels will also come with a small icon of a government building, so they are easily identifiable to users. The special labels will appear not only on the candidate’s Twitter Profile page, but also in the tweets and retweets made by the candidate’s account.

Twitter’s senior public policy manager Bridget Coyne explained that the U.S. election labels will appear on campaign accounts of candidates running for state Governor, U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives, during the midterm general election only.

The labels are a product of Twitter’s partnership with Ballotpedia, a non-profit, civic organization that publishes nonpartisan information on politics. Twitter said the special feature will start appearing on its website and apps after May 30. The badges will only appear on the accounts of candidates who agreed to apply the labels.

In addition, Twitter has also announced in a separate post its new rules for political ads. The company’s Political Campaigning Policy is designed to tell advertisers how the platform differentiates a political ad from a non-political one and the methods used in doing this.

“As part of this new policy, we will require advertisers who want to run political campaigning ads for Federal elections to self-identify and certify that they are located in the U.S. Candidates and committees will have to provide their FEC ID, and non-FEC registered organizations and individuals will have to submit a notarized form,” Twitter explained.

“We will send a letter to the mailing address registered with the FEC, business, or individual to validate the identity and location of all political campaigning advertisers. In addition, we will not allow foreign nationals to target political ads to people who are identified as being in the U.S.”

Twitter noted that political advertisers should comply with its stricter requirements. For example, their handle’s profile photo, header photo and website must be consistent with their online presence. Their Twitter bios should also include links to websites that provide valid contact information.

The new feature and policy are said to be part of Twitter’s goal of improving the quality of information presented on its platform.