Auditing the Compliance and Enforcement of Twitter's Advertising Policy

TL;DR

This study conducts a large-scale audit of Twitter's adult advertising policy enforcement, revealing significant violations, inconsistent moderation across languages, and emphasizing the need for improved transparency and compliance monitoring.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of Twitter's adult ad policy compliance using automated tools and manual annotations, highlighting enforcement gaps and language-based inconsistencies.

Findings

38% of ads violate the policy

Only 63% of non-compliant ads are removed

Moderation inconsistencies across languages

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.