Twitter on Tuesday urged readers to verify the facts for the first time in tweets sent by U.S. President Donald Trump, warning that his allegations about the postal ballots were false and had been refuted by the fact-checkers.
The move marked a radical change for the social network, Trump’s main tool for delivering an unfiltered version of his message to his political base, after years of permissive policies regarding the content of his platform.
The company has tightened these policies in recent years amid criticism that its hands-free approach has allowed abuse, false accounts and misinformation to flourish.
Trump lambasted the company in response, accusing him – in a tweet – of interfering in the 2020 presidential election. “Twitter completely stifles the FREE SPEECH, and I, as president, will not allow that to happen. ! ” he said.
Trump, who has more than 80 million Twitter followers, said in tweets earlier today that the postal ballots would be “substantially fraudulent” and result in a “rigged election”. He also singled out the governor of California on the issue, although the state is not alone in using postal ballots.
A few hours later, Twitter posted a blue exclamation mark alert under these tweets, prompting readers to “get the facts on the postal ballots” and directing them to a page containing information aggregated by staff members. from Twitter about the allegations.
A headline at the top said “Trump baselessly claims that postal ballots would result in electoral fraud”, and was followed by a “what you need to know” section dealing with three specific assertions made in the tweets.
Trump posted the same text on the postal ballots on his official Facebook page, where the message garnered 170,000 reactions and was shared 17,000 times. Facebook’s policy is to delete content that distorts the methods of voting or voter registration, but in this case, it did not change the message.
“We think people should be able to have a solid debate on the electoral process, which is why we have designed our policies to focus on false statements that may interfere with the vote,” a spokesperson for Reuters told Reuters. Facebook.
Misleading information
Twitter said applying a fact-checking label to the president’s tweets was an extension of its new “misleading information” policy, introduced earlier this month to combat misinformation about the coronavirus.
He stated at the time that he would later extend the COVID-19 policy to other types of disputed or misleading information.
Twitter has so far used its policies sparingly against big political figures, but has deleted tweets from the presidents of Brazil and Venezuela who violated its coronavirus rules.
The company’s alert on Trump’s postal voting tweets came hours after it refused to respond to separate tweets that Trump had sent regarding the 2001 death of a former staff member. of Congressman Joe Scarborough after his widower asked the company to withdraw them to pursue the false claims.
A Twitter spokesperson told Reuters Trump that postal voting tweets were linked to the integrity of the election and were therefore subject to different treatment under his policies.
Asked about the Scarborough tweets, a Twitter spokesperson said the company is expanding its products and policies to respond to these tweets more effectively in the future, without elaborating.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
