Throughout his term, President Donald Trump has relied on Twitter to be his bullhorn. But since early Tuesday, the company has stepped up its effort to fact-check the president, labeling 38% of his 29 tweets and retweets with warnings that said he made misleading claims about the electoral process, according to a tally by The New York Times.
In September, Twitter said it would take aggressive action on tweets that misled readers about the voting process, discouraged people from voting or preemptively declared victory for a candidate. So far, Twitter’s enforcement actions have focused on the president and people in his immediate circle, like family members and staff members.
Although the president’s Twitter usage was fairly subdued Tuesday, he quickly escalated his volume and rhetoric in the early hours of Wednesday. He continued Thursday, using Twitter to make unfounded claims about election fraud and to imply that he had won the races in states where no victor had been confirmed.
Twitter added labels to 11 of Trump’s tweets or retweets (although one tweet that Trump had shared was later deleted by its author). Most of the labels said Trump had shared content that was “disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.” But one tweet, in which Trump preemptively claimed to have won Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, was marked with a small reminder that those races had not yet been called.
“Big Tech interfered against President Trump before Election Day, and they are now continuing that interference in the days after as they silence the president on their platforms,” said Samantha Zager, deputy national press secretary for the Trump campaign. “The American people deserve to know what is happening with this election, but Big Tech is only interested in stopping the flow of information to voters.”
A Twitter spokesman said the company planned to continue to take action against tweets that prematurely declare victory or contain misleading information.
Kate Conger c.2020 The New York Times Company
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