On Wednesday, 4 November, Twitter and Facebook added a warning label to US President Donald Trump’s tweet and post that alleged that the presidential election is being stolen. The posts were in an apparent reference to the Democrats.
“We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!,” he tweeted.
The warning label put up by the platform read: “Some or all of the content shared in this tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”
The official account of Twitter Safety tweeted: “We placed a warning on a Tweet from @realDonaldTrump for making a potentially misleading claim about an election. This action is in line with our Civic Integrity Policy.”
Facebook Labels Same Content Shared by Trump
Trump shared the same content on Facebook and the platform pinned a label to the post mentioning: “Final results may be different from initial vote counts, as ballot counting will continue for days or weeks.”
The official account of Facebook Newsroom said that the platform started labelling posts when Trump made claims of “premature victory.”
Twitter Labels James Woods’ Tweet
On Wednesday, actor James Woods shared a tweet on mail-in ballots and mentioned that the “ballot harvesting” is the “greatest threat” to the American democracy since the Civil War.
This tweet, too, was flagged by Twitter and the warning label mentioned that “some or all of the content shared in this tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”
Later, the actor shared a screenshot of the tweet in question and the social media giant labelled this as well.
Reacting to the action taken by Twitter, James Woods wrote: “Evidently you can’t even have an opinion on Twitter anymore. 'Open forums' by definition allow the free exchange of opinions. 'Publications' editorialise and suppress. Twitter knows the free ride is over if the President is re-elected.”
Trump Campaign’s Tweet on Win in South Carolina Flagged
Twitter had earlier labelled a tweet shared by the Trump campaign that declared the victory of US President Donald Trump in South Carolina. The label was pinned on the tweet for sharing the information when the official sources may not have declared the win.
The label read: “Official sources may not have called the race when this was Tweeted.”
The tweet was labelled even when several news outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and Politico had projected that Trump will win South Carolina.
Twitter said that the tweet was in violation of its rule that was brought out for the US Presidential Election this year which stated that such tweets need to be based on calls from at least two of the seven news organisations that have been specified, Politico reported.
“Of those seven, only the Associated Press had called the race for Trump,” the report added.
The Trump campaign had shared another tweet on similar lines that declared victory in Florida. However, Twitter did not label this tweet because “it included a nod to one of Twitter’s seven approved race callers.”
“Source:@DecisionDeskHQ,” the campaign appended a text to the tweet in an apparent acknowledgment of the company’s rules.
In an earlier blog, Twitter had listed ABC News, Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, National Election Pool, NBC News, Reuters as the news outlets that have independent election decision desks as official sources for results.
On the eve of the United States Presidential Elections 2020, Twitter and Facebook had outlined plans for placing warning labels on posts from US election candidates and campaigns that claim victory in advance of official results.
The moves, announced on 2 November, came as social network platforms brace for what has been an unusual election cycle due to a high number of mail-in ballots that may cause a delay in final results, Reuters reported.
(With inputs from Politico)
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