Twitter has banned Russian security company Kaspersky Lab from advertising on its platform. The ban covers all of Kaspersky’s official accounts, preventing them from boosting their reach.
Unsurprisingly, Kaspersky found and CEO Eugene Kasperky has found the move to be utter ridiculous; having posted his thoughts about the matter on a blog post. In it, he outlines the kind of content shared by his company, pointing out that it has done nothing that might be grounds for an advertising ban.
“However, the most important thing is the content we promote.
Posts about ransomware epidemics and recommendations on how to protect against them; helpful materials on kids’ cyber-safety for teachers; cybersecurity spending benchmarks. There are, of course, some purely marketing things there, but, well, why shouldn’t there be? We sell protection against cyberthreats and that’s it. No violations of Twitter advertising practices!”
Kaspersky also shared how much his company spends on Twitter promotion. Pointing out that it spent €75,000 (RM360,000), which isn’t really a large number to begin with.
Twitter’s ban is not necessary coming out of nowhere. Kaspersky has been accused of working with the Russian government to deploy and spread cyberweapons. Although the company has denied that it provides assistance to any government intelligence efforts.
Despite this, it could be the micro-blogging platform deciding to avoid taking chances and clamp down on anything that might even be remotely connected to Russia. The company has been drawing criticism for its lack of oversight in allowing Russian bots to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election.
[Source: Kaspersky Lab]
