Two hours after the social network acted against the president’s account, Trump has tweeted: “Twitter is completely repressing FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION and I, as president, will not allow it to happen!” The capital letters are yours.
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Twitter this year began to put limits on disinformation on the network through a system of warnings. Until now you have used it to point hoaxes and manipulations and more specifically, since May, combat hoaxes about the covid-19 pandemic. When it detects a tweet with doubtful or uncontested information, put a link underneath that says “know the facts” and which refers to official information.
Trump’s tweeting activity began Tuesday with a series of tweets crying out against the California governor. The most populous state in the country announced at the beginning of May that, given the possibility that a re-emergence of the covid-19 in the fall would jeopardize the holding of the presidential elections as normal, it was going to send materials to vote by mail to all registered voters.
Trump has tweeted (capital letters are his): “THERE IS NO WAY (ZERO!) That voting by mail is anything other than basically fraudulent.” He added that the governor “is going to send votes to millions of people … Anyone living in the State.” And he has also said: “Professionals will follow who will tell all those people, many of whom had not even thought about voting, how and by whom to vote. This is going to be a tricky choice. No way!”.
Trump’s claims have sparked outrage in the state and Twitter’s stupor. Vote by mail it will expand to registered voters only, and to no one else. In addition, the plan of the electoral authority, Alex Padilla, is a kind of insurance of last resort, in case you cannot vote in person, which remains the priority. The governor’s order is to be prepared to send a ballot to everyone who cannot vote, who could become a large part of the population as the pandemic evolves, not to substitute elections in person for elections by mail.
About six hours after these claims, a warning has appeared under Trump’s tweets. “Know the facts about voting by mail.” The link refers to information from large US media in which it is explained why it is a falsehood. Besides, Twitter exposes in three concise points why the president’s statements are false.
The Twitter movement comes at a time of Trump’s special virulence online. The president, increasingly surrounded by late and disorderly management of the coronavirus crisis, which is about to reach the symbolic figure of 100,000 deaths in the country, has been attacking all kinds of real and imaginary enemies through the social network for days. First, he has tried to draw attention, with little success, to a theory that he has dubbed Obamagate and that it consists of an updated dislike of the hoax that the White House spied on his electoral campaign. In recent days, he has also tried to promote another conspiracy theory about an old enemy, the journalist and former republican Joe Scarborough. The hoax says Scarborough was involved in the death of an adviser of his when he was a congressman for Florida. The widower of the deceased has written to Twitter asking him to delete Trump’s tweets on this matter because of the pain they cause him. Twitter has refused.
Donald Trump’s Twitter account has so far been spared some actions of social networks against the extreme right in the United States. Facebook, Twitter or YouTube have completely removed the content of some entire media, such as InfoWars (media that Trump promoted as a candidate in 2016) and some especially notorious hate preachers. The Trump account has never suffered, despite the constant falsehoods that the president pours for 80 million followers (double that when he won the presidency). As for world leaders, Twitter has deleted tweets from the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, and that of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. But never Trump.
Trump opened his Twitter account in 2009. From the beginning, he used it to attack President Barack Obama and all politics in general. The scandalous use of the social network was fundamental in the media impact that his campaign had in 2016. Twitter has never revealed how many times the account has been denounced for inappropriate content, and has made it clear that it considers that it has a certain public and historical value. leave the President of the United States in writing on the web. Disinformation about voting by mail is the first limit that Trump finds himself on the network.
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