Twitter on Monday, in an update to its 2020 election policies, said it will add warning labels to candidate tweets on election results unless they cite “official” news outlets or state authorities. Twitter deemed the following outlets official resources for election results: ABC News, Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News and NBC News.
Labels will not be applied to tweets coming from those outlets, Twitter said; labels will also not be added to candidates’ tweets that directly cite tweets or information reported by these outlets.
In particular, Twitter, said it will have an eye on President Trump and Democratic Nominee Joe Biden’s accounts. In a blog post, the company said it’s “prioritizing” claims about the presidential election in an effort to weed out “misleading information.”
Beyond Trump and Biden, Twitter said the accounts for candidates running for governor, U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives are eligible to have labels added to their tweets. U.S.-based accounts with more than 100,000 followers, as well as tweets that have “significant engagement” (25,000 “likes” or 25,000 quoted tweets or retweets) are also eligible to have labels slapped on them. These changes will be in place from Tuesday through Inauguration Day, Twitter said.
“We believe this is the right thing to do to protect the integrity of the conversation around the election while counting is ongoing and before results are announced by state authorities,” Twitter said in its blog post.
Monday’s update comes after Twitter already implemented a few changes in advance of Election Day, including altering how retweets work. Facebook has also made several changes, including barring political ads for one week after polls close on Tuesday night, as the company aims to block “premature victory” claims.
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