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Twitter is banning political ads on its social networking platform, CEO Jack Dorsey said on Wednesday.

“We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,” Dorsey said in a series of tweets. Politicians’ messages should be spread on Twitter, he said, by individual users following their accounts or retweeting their messages, not by campaigns paying for Twitter users to see their tweets.

Twitter stock (ticker: TWTR) was down 1% in after hours trading Wednesday. On its earnings call with investors last week, Twitter CFO Ned Segal said that the political ads around the 2018 U.S. midterm elections “were less than $3 million for us.”

In September, Segal played down the overall importance of political ad dollars for Twitter. “You probably also know that the political advertising isn’t a big business for us,” he told attendees at a Citigroup investment conference. “So we think about these things less about the dollars associated with political ads and more about just an opportunity to serve our purpose because Twitter’s such a great place to go to find out what’s happening when something is playing out in real time, like an election.”

Dorsey’s message today seemed like a rebuke of Facebook, which reported earnings as he tweeted out the new policy. Facebook has faced withering questioning from Congress and other critics over its policies that allow, for instance, political ads with factual inaccuracies to be posted on its network.

“While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions,” Dorsey tweeted.

Facebook co-founder, chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued last week in a speech and in Congressional testimony that while the company is working to eliminate fake or misleading content on its network, it will not restrict politicians messages on the platform.

That line of reasoning led Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Ny.) to ask if she could post intentionally misleading information on Facebook to damage an opponent. Zuckerberg responded that he wasn’t sure if that would violate the sites policies, but that it would “probably” be allowed.

This story has been updated to add previous comments from Twitter executives about political advertising.

Write to Ben Walsh at ben.walsh@barrons.com