My post, Twitter to Hit Muffle on Advocacy Ads and 501(c)(4)s on Twitter’s new ad policy is over at the Bolder Advocacy blog. First para:

In response to larger criticism leveled against social media companies taking foreign money for paid advertisements that influence American elections, Twitter announced a major change to its advertising policy that overcorrects so substantially that it outright bans many environmental, public health, and civil rights organizations from being able to target their messages.

The policy is part of a disturbing trend—the true “town square” is no longer private property, but rather for-profit corporations that can limit expression with their onerous Terms of Service. I’ll stipulate Twitter (and Google… and Facebook…) is not taking away expression from non-paid posts, but as you probably notice in your everyday use of social media, your unpaid content just doesn’t get to the eyeballs of too many people these days. Paid ads are the only way to truly leverage this new town square, and its perfectly legal in most circumstances for the owners to exclude whomever they want.