Earlier this month, Twitter unveiled a new system to combat the spread of misinformation on the platform by labeling potentially misleading tweets and providing users with links to verified sources for more information on the topic addressed.
Naturally, it was only a matter of time before a certain prolific Twitter user got hit with a fact-check label. It happened yesterday when Twitter flagged two tweets from Donald Trump in which the president claimed mail-in ballots would lead to widespread voter fraud. The tweets were appended with a message that read, “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” which linked to a curated fact-check page listing further links to other sources.
….living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
After the labels were applied, Trump returned to Twitter to argue that the fact check is a sign that Twitter “is interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election” and “stifling FREE SPEECH.”
….Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
However, while Trump found the labels violating, others argued that Twitter’s fact-check advisory didn’t go far enough. While some users felt that Twitter should have clearly labeled the tweets as false, the company said that Trump’s tweets about mail-in ballots were not in violation of the platform’s rules because they did not explicitly discourage voting, and the labels were applied to offer context surrounding Trump’s claims.
“These Tweets contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots,” Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough told CNN Business in an email. “This decision is in line with the approach we shared earlier this month.”
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