Twitter says it flagged 3,00,000 'misleading' US election tweets including Trump's

On November 12, Twitter announced that it labeled 300,000 tweets related to the 2020 US presidential election that was "potentially misleading”. The flagged content made up to 0.2 percent of all US election-related posts, the microblogging company said in a statement. The labels were issued between October 27 and November 11 and included 456 tweets, including tweets by US President Donald Trump that displayed warning message for a limited engagement. 

Twitter started labelling tweets after an onslaught of misleading and unverified claims were launched by the Republican Party and US President Trump who claimed that the Democrats “stole the elections” in “fraud.” Republican politicians and conservatives tweeted unsubstantiated claims about mail-in ballot-rigging as Twitter quickly scrambled to flag most of those high-profile false claims made on VIP verified accounts. Under its Civic integrity policy that Twitter put in place to combat misinformation about the electoral process, the microblogging warned not to use Twitter’s services for the purpose of manipulating or interfering in election results. “Any attempts to undermine the integrity of our service is antithetical to our fundamental rights and undermines the core tenets of freedom of expression, the value upon which our company is based,” Twitter said in a release outlining its election policies. 

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Flagged with disclaimers

More than half of the US President’s tweets were flagged with disclaimers after his democratic contender Joe Biden was projected a winner. “This claim about election fraud is disputed,” Twitter mentioned in a disclaimer as it flagged Trump’s election fraud tweet within 15 minutes after it was shared at 9:49 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. This included a link to Twitter’s detailed company policy about flagging to combat misinformation.

The company flagged another tweet where Trump said, “Democrat-run & controlled” had “started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE.” Meanwhile, a tweet from the Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler who declared a premature win for Biden was also flagged by Twitter. Tweets labeled as misleading or flagged with a warning message reduced engagement or re-quoting by about 29 percent. Twitter reminded citizens in a disclaimer that "election results were likely to be delayed, and that voting by mail is safe and legitimate,” at least 389 times. 

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