Social media companies have been in the hot seat as of late regarding political advertising. Facebook especially has been targeted with criticism, specifically for allowing paid political advertisements containing false information. This raises concern for where the line should be drawn between freedom of expression, and purposefully putting out misleading information.

On the opposite side of the issue, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey recently tweeted that Twitter would no longer allow any political advertising because, he said, political reach should be earned and not bought.

Dorsey's reasoning is that it's not about freedom of expression, but rather about paying for reach. In his Twitter post, he references Zuckerberg by saying "We're working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad… well... they can say whatever they want."

In this regard, he's not wrong. I think it is greedy and unethical for social media companies to intentionally allow their audience to be misled if they are paid for it. In Facebook's case, this can affect people's voting behavior.

Candidates paying for political advertising is essential to their numbers in the polls, and social media is a huge component of this. Smaller candidates won't have a chance to build their platform without this, it's not a matter of if they "earned" it by word of mouth.

In response to Dorsey's tweet, Trump's campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted this was another attempt by the left to silence conservatives. However, Twitter's ban applies to all campaigns.

In today's polarizing political climate, it is easy to assume this is the right's fault because Facebook's trial largely involved conservative ads, and how controversial in general Trump's presidency is.

The left and right continually blame each other and platforms like Twitter and Facebook, who have the power to influence large numbers of people, play a huge role in how people choose to vote and which party they agree with.

In my opinion, Facebook and Twitter are on two opposite sides of the spectrum, and a middle ground desperately needs to be reached. Facebook should screen what kinds of political ads should be allowed on the site as well as accurate fact-checking. Twitter banning political ads can hurt voter turnout and as long as the ads are appropriate and accurate, there shouldn't be a reason they're banned.