Twitter on Friday, 6 November, began flagging tweets on the platform which referred to Democratic nominee Joe Biden as ‘president-elect’, saying that official sources had not called the presidential race yet.
Counting still remains underway in the heated presidential race where Biden maintains a lead over President Donald Trump. However, this lead only projects a potential victory and not a definite victory, as votes continue to be counted in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Arizona.
Regardless, many are taking to Twitter to announce and celebrate the Democratic victory, though no news agency has officially called it yet, with various tweets referring to Biden as ‘president-elect” and Harris as “vice-president elect”.
In response, Twitter has flagged the tweets of eminent journalists, officials, and others with a large reach with the message “Official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted”. The message carries a link which redirects to a page with the status of the counting.
Flagged tweets include those of Scott Dworkin, co-founder of Democratic Coalition and podcaster; Shaun King, and Andrew Yang amongst others.
Move in Line With Civic Integrity Policy: Twitter
Twitter told AFP that this move was in relation with its Civic Integrity Policy.
“We will label tweets claiming victory that meet our criteria as both Pennsylvania and the presidential race overall have only been called by one source,” a Twitter spokesperson told AFP.
“Per our rules, until a second source makes this determination, claims of victory must cite a source that has made the call,” the platform added.
The platform has also flagged many of President Trump’s tweets falsely claiming both victory ahead of official results, and “election fraud”. Flagged tweets from Trump also include his baseless claim that Democrats are trying to “steal” the election.
In an effort to moderate and filter content, both Facebook and Twitter are flagging tweets and banning groups that promote violence or propagate fake news.
On Thursday, Facebook shut down the group ‘Stop the Steal’, which saw massive number of supporters of US President Donald Trump sharing misinformation about the election process and calling for violence. The group that started on Wednesday had over 3,50,000 members in less than 24 hours before Facebook took it down.
(With inputs from AFP.)
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