Twitter added on Tuesday “check the facts“to two tweets from Donald Trump who said that postal voting was necessarily”fraudulent“, a first when social networks are often accused of laxity in their treatment of comments made by leaders.
“These tweets contain potentially misleading information about the voting process and have been flagged to provide additional context on postal voting. This decision was made in accordance with the approach we presented earlier this month“, justified a spokesperson for the platform.
Two weeks ago, Twitter tightened up its rules to combat misinformation about the pandemic, by expanding the types of messages that can be flagged to users as potentially “deceitful” or “controversial“.
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This is the first time that Twitter has applied its rules to the American president.
“There is NO WAY (ZERO!) That postal voting is anything other than substantially fraudulent“the US president tweeted.
“The Governor of California is sending ballots to millions of people. Everyone who lives in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will receive them. Then professionals will tell them, to the many people who have never even thought of voting before, how and for whom to vote. It will be a rigged election“, he continued.
Under these two tweets is now displayed the mention “Get the Facts About Mail Voting“, which refers to a summary of the facts and articles published in the American press to correct the truth (for example the fact that California only sends ballots to registered voters and not to all the inhabitants of the State).
Networks are regularly criticized for applying double standards in their fight against disinformation.
Facebook, in particular, made the controversial decision not to submit to “fact-checking“by third parties (verification of the facts) comments made by political figures.
Twitter, for its part, has solved part of the problem by banning political advertisements.
But that does not prevent Donald Trump from continuing to tweet a lot on the subjects, often in a peremptory and contested way.
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