Last month, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced his platform would not only start banning political ads, but also ads about issues like climate change, immigration, and abortion. 

In typical knee-jerk fashion, cable news pundits and even Democrats praised Twitter’s move as a game-changing, responsible action that will distinguish it from Facebook’s numb-founding decision to decline to fact-check its political ads, thereby allowing politicians to pay for posts that promote any wild accusation or debunked conspiracy theory. But activists saw the bigger picture. As the founder of the Abortion Access Front, Twitter’s announced policy would have killed our nonprofit’s ability to pay for ads that promote our shows, rallies, and actions where we push back against dishonest anti-abortion rhetoric with facts. 

After weeks of outcry from activists working in numerous fields, Twitter backtracked on Friday, announcing it would continue to allow some paid issue advocacy on the platform. 

Yay for us, right? Wrong. 

Twitter seems to have created more questions than answers. In a call with reporters on Friday, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s legal, policy, and trust and safety lead, laid out some basic guidelines of the new policy. What it lacks in specifics, it makes up for in vagueness.    

First off, issue advertisers must now get certified. The “How to get certified” page states groups must provide personal information, like a mailing address, which Twitter will surely keep safe. Once certified, an issue advertiser won’t be able to target people by zip code, which is not going to be helpful if, say, there’s a water crisis in a certain area of the city, but you can’t use zip codes to help raise awareness about it. 

Another new rule is that you can’t promote an advocacy ad that is tied to promoting or opposing a piece of legislation, candidate, or judicial nominee. So, if you were thinking about paying for an ad to voice your concern about a judge nominated for a lifetime appointment who is on the record claiming abortion is murder, that, too, is a no-go. They also emphasize you can’t promote “prohibited advertisers.” 

In the interest of transparency, I am personally a prohibited advertiser. Not Abortion Access Front, but me, personally. I was banned from buying ads because, wait for it, I use profanity in my feed. That’s right. I can’t buy an ad because I occasionally drop F bombs in my own posts. FYI, swearing in a tweet is not against Twitter policy, it just makes me a prohibited advertiser. This means that if I appear at an Abortion Access Front event, or any other charity function I may give my time to, they can’t pay to promote my appearance because I am on the prohibited advertiser list. It’s a huge problem.  

But the biggest head-shaker is that Gadde also acknowledged that specifics aren’t set, and that some areas will be subjective. So, this policy goes into effect on November 22 and there aren’t any specifics? What is a subjective policy? Does each ad rep get to interpret the policy as they understand it? Or worse, do they decide to accept or reject an ad based on their own “subjective” ideological leanings? 

For me, this is one of the most frustrating parts of this announcement. The very reason there are endless abortion and climate debates in this country is because the media and politicians have given the “subjective” opinions of uninformed talking heads the same credibility as actual experts. Twitter’s new policy seems to further this trend by continuing to undermine our ability to promote evidence-based information. 

I started Abortion Access Front because anti-abortion zealots fill platforms like Twitter and Facebook daily with dangerous and medically inaccurate quackery that has resulted in politicians using these lies as the basis for hundreds and hundreds of abortion restrictions. Yet when you watch cable news, late night shows, or presidential debates, these relentless attacks are barely mentioned. 

Our mission is simple: Since the media won’t prioritize correcting all the disinformation, we will. AAF’s performers, writers, and activists spend four months out of the year doing a reproductive rights roadshow that brings comedy fans together with reproductive rights and justice activists and abortion providers for an evening of fun and community building designed to entertain and educate. 

Up until last year, Twitter and Facebook ads had been a crucial tool in helping us rally folks to our events, because it’s nearly impossible to grow an audience with social media posts alone. The ads allowed us to target regions, cities, and people who have expressed concerns about reproductive rights. These ads helped us reach people who want to become more engaged, but possibly have never heard of our organization. 

We need these ads, especially now. We travel almost entirely to states where the abortion bans have hit the hardest and these ads had become the last pipeline to target specific markets, where local media has become less and less willing to do stories or interviews that focus on abortion rights. Often in those markets, if we put up flyers, they get ripped down. These ads are sometimes all we have. We even tried to pay for a billboard in Minneapolis that had our name and featured a line drawing of a uterus, yet the billboard was rejected because putting “a vagina” on a billboard was too controversial. Not sure what makes me more ragey: the censorship of abortion or someone not knowing the difference between a fallopian tube and a labia. 

Social media ads helped us cut through this kind of b.s. and directly reach our audience. Until changes started happening. 

Before there was Twitter’s policy, there was Facebook’s. Abortion is considered a “social issue” by Facebook, looped in with elections and politics, so with “abortion” in our name, we had to become political advertisers. To do this meant giving the platform even more personal information than most Facebook users usually do.

Unlike the average Facebook user who has the option of adding their phone number, “political advertisers” are required to provide one. We are also required to provide our address (P.O. boxes are not allowed) — and now that information is public record. To be clear, this means the address of our organization is available for anti-abortion zealots to target. They already show up to our events with bloody fetus signs and bullhorns, and make threats to me and my staff on Facebook and Twitter. Why wouldn’t they show up at our offices? 

And what makes matters worse — venues where we do our shows have had to also become “political advertisers” to cross promote the event with their own ads on Facebook. Many of these club owners, understandably so, don’t feel comfortable giving up their personal information, so they opt out of promoting the shows. That means, we find ourselves scrambling to work with clubs and producers who are willing to make themselves publicly vulnerable by placing an ad (especially in red states), or we have to do it ourselves, which is an unnecessary and costly burden placed on us with the hope that it pays off. For small nonprofits like mine, that is an expensive crap shoot, and spending extra money while creating more restrictions on how we can get the word out means reaching fewer people. And fewer people hearing the truth means we are less effective at helping change the narrative. 

While the reach of Twitter’s ban seems uncertain for now, both Facebook’s and Twitter’s policies seem as though they were created, at best, in a vacuum of people who know nothing about issue advocacy, or worse, intentionally crafted to make it extremely difficult for nonprofits to place ads that combat the lies and misinformation about the most important issues of our time. Ironically, lies they allow to be posted on their platforms remain free of charge. 

Jack D. and Mark Z. need to understand why certain issues become political. When it comes to abortion, let’s be clear: It is a one-sided battle waged exclusively by those who feel that they are entitled to make decisions about someone else’s body and destiny. Those of us who fight back aren’t being political; we are fighting for our lives.

Had they talked to those of us doing the work, maybe they would understand that and start cleaning up the mess they have created. Or at the very least, not restrict us from paying them to do it for them.   

Lizz Winstead is a comedian and co-creator and former head writer of The Daily Show. Currently, she is founder and chief creative officer of the reproductive rights nonprofit Abortion Access Front. 

Maybe we should have guessed that an administration led by a man who didn’t want to be made fun of at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner also may send a lady in a pink crown to jail for laughing at its attorney general. Big shocker. Our overreactive, thin-skinned, sexist thug of a president has created an overreactive, thin-skinned, sexist, thuggish Justice Department.

Earlier this year Desiree Fairooz was arrested for the crime of laughing at a particularly gaslighty comment during the confirmation hearings of Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. And last week, we learned that she was convicted and could face 12 months in prison, $2,000 in fines, or both.

I’m personally offended by the idea that a bunch of powerful men could lock up a woman who has an appreciation for irony. I’ve made my career using comedy to expose the hypocrisy of the powerful. It’s the whole point of the very popular television program The Daily Show, which I co-created. It’s also the point of Lady Parts Justice League, a cabal of comics I brought together to expose creeps hell bent on destroying access to birth control and abortion.

So when the government comes after a woman for laughing in the face of political hypocrisy, it’s my patriotic duty to call bullshit.

Fairooz was right to laugh at the Sessions confirmation hearing. Everyone should have been laughing.

Here are the horrifically dangerous actions of Desiree Fairooz at Sessions’s January confirmation hearing:

In his glowing remarks about the future attorney general, Sen. Richard Shelby was prattling on that Sessions’s history of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.”

This is when the laugh came out of Fairooz’s mouth. I am sure it was similar to a variation of the guttural utterances anyone with a heart, a pulse, and a thirst for facts has been spewing during this unintended comedy show we have all been living in since the election.

In fact, Fairooz’s response may have been even more reserved than the spit takes that have wound up on our computer screens, as those sitting near her during the hearings have said her laugh, or gasp or cough or whatever, was so inaudible they couldn’t tell what it was.

I’ll wait for your own laughter to die down, and if jackbooted thugs did not bust your door down and arrest you for letting out a chuckle, read on.

My  question is, “Why didn’t the entire room convulse with laughter at that point?”

Jeff Sessions’s history of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented.” LOLOL.

That is comedy gold.

I mean, this is the guy who in 1986 was denied a federal judgeship after it came out that he allegedly said he was okay with the Ku Klux Klan until he found out they smoked pot.

HIS PROBLEM WITH THE KKK WAS THEY SMOKE POT.

In fact, his ties to racist factions at the time were so alarming, Coretta Scott King personally wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee asking that Sessions be denied the position because he “used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.” Back then, the Senate Judiciary Committee understood that if the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is saying you’re racist, there’s a problem. But in 2017, they seem to say, “Hey, why limit yourself?”  

And his “clear and well-documented” treatment of people is not limited to racial inequality. It never is. As senator, Sessions consistently voted against rights for LGBTQ folks. His nomination to attorney general was cheered by anti-abortion extremist Troy Newman.

Jeff Sessions is beyond laughable, and to me the crime is that the whole room wasn’t laughing. Laughing until they were crying.

As a nation, we should all be laughing at the suggestion of Jeff Sessions as a civil libertarian, a fighter of freedom, a person qualified for the job of attorney general of the United States.

And now that he has it, a few months in, his department is prosecuting a woman who laughed at him.

The Trump administration seems to think it can end criticism by punishing it away

As a comedian and satirist, what scares me most is that not taking these licks in stride is the backbone of this administration. And they seem to think they can end criticism by punishing it away.

Even Joe McCarthy is saying from his grave, “Lighten up, man.” Fragile egos are the worst, and those who can’t take a joke are announcing to the world they are impostors. Since laughing at someone creates a status shift, a perceived loss of power is transferred in that moment of release. If you believe you are an impostor, you panic at the loss of even a drop of it and become angry and belligerent as a counterbalance.  I watch it with dude hecklers all the time. They can’t shut me down, so they just become loud and rude.

Now we have a president who is basically that insecure, belligerent heckler. But with a Justice Department who can arrest people for “acting up.”  

It is scary enough that as comedians and social critics we are facing an ever-growing totalitarianism. I mean, the Federal Communications Commission is investigating Stephen Colbert for a presidential dick joke, for Chrissakes. But when we start arresting and convicting people for laughing, we have created a society that outlaws thinking for ourselves and reacting when we are fed bullshit.

That is literally what happened. Laughing at an outrageous statement from a politician has led to Fairooz being convicted on two counts: engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct with the intent to disrupt congressional proceedings; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing. It’s been pointed out by people who miss the point that the convictions are not for the actual laugh, but for the disturbance made while she was being escorted out of the hearing by a police officer. But because of her laugh, she was seen as so dangerous that she needed to be arrested, so nice try.

Desiree Fairooz laughs for all of us as we watch dangerous incompetence take center stage, from Rick Perry becoming the head of a department whose name he forgot while promising he would abolish it to Betsy DeVos becoming the secretary of education although she has never taught public school — and never attended one either.

Did Fairooz’s laugh sexually assault someone? Did her giggle shoot an unarmed black teenager? Did her chuckle have suspicious connections to Russia that affected our democratic elections? Of course not! Had that been the case, she wouldn’t have to worry about arrest, conviction, or sentencing.

We are all Desiree. Laughing to keep from crying, resisting to keep from hopelessness.

They say it’s the best medicine, and with the health care bill Republicans are trying to pass, we’re gonna need all the free meds we can get.

I’d love to give the administration some advice and alternative rules to try. For example, it’s important to take criticisms with a grain of salt. That’s “salt” not “assault,” just incase you misheard me the first time. Also, try to see the humor in yourself. It’s better for people to laugh with you than at you. Then while you’re laughing, try not destroying the world in a nuclear war over your own fragile male ego.

As for the rest of us, if this is a taste of things to come, you better stifle that cough or that hiccup, because you could do time in the hole.

Lizz Winstead is co-creator and former head writer of The Daily Show and one of the founders of Air America Radio. She is a co-founder of the Lady Parts Justice League, which is going on The Vagical Mystery Tour, bringing comedy and music shows to 16 cities, joined by a rotation of the biggest names in comedy. A performer and standup comedian, Winstead frequently appears on MSNBC, CNN, and Comedy Central. She lives in Brooklyn. Find her on Twitter @lizzwinstead.

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