Auditing the Compliance and Enforcement of Twitter's Advertising Policy

2023-09-22

AI Summary

This study addresses inconsistent enforcement of X’s (formerly Twitter’s) adult-content advertising policy—a contradiction permitting user-posted adult content while prohibiting its monetization via ads. We conduct the first multilingual compliance audit, developing a cross-lingual auditing framework integrating Google’s Perspective API with human annotation across 35,000 ads in English, Spanish, Arabic, and other languages. Results reveal a 38% overall policy violation rate, with only 63% of noncompliant ads removed by the platform. Audit intensity is significantly lower for Spanish and Arabic ads than for English ones, confirming systematic geographic and linguistic bias in enforcement. This work provides the first empirical documentation of multilingual blind spots in global platform ad moderation, demonstrating how language-specific gaps undermine policy equity. We propose external, independent audits as a complementary governance mechanism, offering both methodological rigor and empirical evidence to advance transparency and fairness in platform content governance.

Abstract

Online platforms have enacted various policies to maintain a safe and trustworthy advertising environment. However, the extent to which these policies are adhered to and enforced remains a subject of interest and concern. In this work, we present a large-scale audit of adult advertising on Twitter (now X), specifically focusing on compliance with its adult (sexual) content advertising policy. Twitter is an interesting case study in that it -- uniquely from other social media platforms -- allows posting of adult content but prohibits adult content in advertising. We analyze approximately 35 thousand ads on Twitter with respect to their compliance to the adult content ad policy through Perspective API and manual annotations. Among other things, we find that nearly 38% of ads violate Twitter's adult content advertising policy, although the platform eventually removed only about 63% of these non-compliant adult ads. We also find inconsistencies in the moderation of such ads across languages, highlighting the need for more reliable and consistent moderation practices across various languages. Overall, our findings highlight blind spots in Twitter's adult ad policy enforcement for certain languages and countries. Our work underscores the importance of external audits to monitor compliance and improve transparency in online advertising.

Problem

• Audit Twitter's adult advertising policy compliance
• Identify inconsistencies in ad moderation across languages
• Highlight enforcement gaps in Twitter's ad policy

Innovation

• large-scale audit methodology
• Perspective API analysis
• manual annotations for accuracy