Twitter had banned political advertising on the site partly because much of it was fake news, but mostly because it opened the site to allegations that it was being used to manipulate the masses towards more populist candidates with short punchy, often racist messages.

However, Musk has scared off a lot of Twitter's other advertisers by allowing those who used it for racist, anti-semetic or otherwise abnoxious messaging, back onto the site. Musk now thinks it is probably better to relax the rules on political adverts to get some money rolling in, before landlord sends a baliff around. 

The company is “relaxing” its policies for “cause-based” ads (i.e., on topics like climate change or social equity) in the US. 

According to this Twitter page, ads have certain restrictions; they are limited to “geo, keyword, and interest targeting,” for example, and shouldn’t “have the primary goal of driving political, judicial, legislative, or regulatory outcomes.” But according to a bullet point added sometime Tuesday (it does not appear in this cached version from earlier in the day), “advertisers whose cause-based ads target only within the United States are exempt from the above-listed restrictions.”

Twitter justifies the change by saying that “cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics.” It’s unclear if the rules will be relaxed in places other than the US in the future.