Providing clarity on political advertising in Canada

We continue to be committed to providing clear, transparent disclosure for ads on Twitter, including political ads. We have been directly engaged with the Government of Canada, Elections Canada, and the Commissioner of Canada Elections on these issues in recent months. We welcome the opportunity to have open conversations on the ways in which we can ensure civic participation and healthy public conversation on our service during the election period.

Our goal is to enhance transparency and to ensure a fair and level playing field when our advertising products are used during elections. We believe that providing meaningful context around all political entities who use our advertising products is vital in this regard. We firmly believe voters must be provided with more context around the ads they see on our service and how we enforce our policies. Twitter is supportive of the requirements set out by the Canada Elections Act and we welcome the clarity.

Last year, we launched our Political Campaigning Policy in the United States to provide clear insight into how we define political advertising and who is advertising on Twitter. In conjunction, we launched the Ads Transparency Center (ATC). The ATC allows anyone across the globe to view promoted Tweets that have been served on Twitter, with even more details on political campaigning ads, including ad spend and targeting demographics, and billing information. Since that time, we have also expanded political advertising transparency to the EU, Australia, and India ahead of critical elections.

Today we are announcing the expansion of our political advertising transparency efforts to Canada.

What’s next?

Over the pre-election timeline — which begins June 30th and ends the day the election is officially called — we will be prohibiting all regulated political ads in Canada. During this period, our policy and enforcement teams will be building the necessary infrastructure and product support to ensure we are appropriately prepared for the critical election period. After the writ is dropped, we will allow regulated political advertising including issue advocacy ads, which will be published in our Ads Transparency Center in compliance with Canadian law.

We look forward to continued collaboration with the Canadian authorities as the election period approaches. Serving the public conversation is our singular mission and we will update the public in Canada on our critical work in these areas throughout the summer over at @TwitterCanada and @TwitterGov.