Documents Show Twitter Encouraged RT To Spend $1.5M On U.S. Election Ads

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Oct. 27, 2017

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced on Thursday that he was banning RT and Sputnik from advertising on his platform due to Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.

RT responded by releasing internal documents showing Twitter encouraged them to spend $1.5 million dollars advertising their coverage of the 2016 presidential election with the promise of an extra $120,000 in "free media" -- a factoid Jack Dorsey conveniently left out of his announcement.

Off-boarding advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik.

We’re donating all projected earnings ($1.9mm) to support external research into the use of Twitter in elections, including use of malicious automation and misinformation. https://t.co/zIxfqqXCZr
— jack (@jack) October 26, 2017

Twitter’s multi-million dollar US election pitch to RT revealed in FULL https://t.co/flh9GLg4f0 pic.twitter.com/ZKOntGvTat
— RT (@RT_com) October 27, 2017

From RT:

After RT published excerpts from Twitter's "limited offer" to spend millions on US election marketing, the company abruptly banned all advertising from the news network. This makes full disclosure and transparency imperative, so here goes.

On Thursday, the micro-blogging platform announced a policy decision to ban ads from RT and Sputnik, citing alleged meddling in the 2016 US election.

It followed Twitter’s report implying that RT was trying to influence US public opinion, crucially without providing context that virtually all news media organizations spend money on advertising their news coverage.

RT was thereby forced to reveal some details of the 2016 negotiations during which Twitter representatives made an exclusive multi-million dollar advertising proposal to spend big during the US presidential election, which was turned down.

Having since been banned, and in order to set the record straight, we are publishing Twitter’s presentation and details of the offer in full.

Here's the documents:

Journalist Glenn Greenwald mocked Dorsey Thursday on Twitter for his "cowardly" decision.

"So irrational, cowardly & arbitrary," Greenwald said. "Are you keeping the millions in ads from the Saudi Government and other pro-US despots?"

So irrational, cowardly & arbitrary. Are you keeping the millions in ads from the Saudi Government and other pro-US despots? https://t.co/L1emjXA6cg
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 26, 2017

The answer is, of course, yes.

Twitter's second largest shareholder is Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, who owns a larger share in the company than CEO Jack Dorsey.

A Saudi prince now owns more of Twitter than Jack Dorsey does http://t.co/VQ6VA1qKJf
— Quartz (@qz) October 7, 2015

Follow InformationLiberation on Twitter, Facebook and Gab.