Twitter labeled two tweets by President Donald Trump on Wednesday “misleading about an election.” The labels come after a tweet made by Trump election night was similarly flagged.
On Wednesday morning, as mail-in ballots were still being counted in a handful of key states, the president baselessly tweeted, “Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the ‘pollsters’ got it completely & historically wrong!”
Twitter quickly added a label that said, “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”
The label was also added to another Trump tweet 15 minutes later that read “WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT” and linking to voter counts favoring his rival Joe Biden.
A Twitter spokesperson also told TheWrap that the platform “will significantly restrict engagements on this tweet.”
The Wednesday tweets followed one posted just after midnight that read, “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!”
That one was labeled like this: “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”
“As votes are still being counted across the country, our teams continue to take enforcement action on tweets that prematurely declare victory or contain misleading information about the election broadly. This is in line with our Civic Integrity Policy and our recent guidance on labeling election results,” said a spokesperson. They added that numerous tweets had been labeled and seen their engagement limited.
“Our teams continue to monitor tweets that attempt to spread misleading information about voting, accounts engaged in spammy behavior, and tweets that make premature or inaccurate claims about election results. Our teams remain vigilant and will continue working to protect the integrity of the election conversation on Twitter,” they said.
Some of the other tweets that faced this treatment came from the Philadelphia GOP, Trump’s re-election campaign and Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis.
The GOP wasn’t alone in accruing labels from Twitter, either. Wisconsin Democratic party chair Ben Wikler received a label for claiming Joe Biden won the state before all ballots were counted.
Leave a Reply