As Trump falsely claims victory, Twitter and Facebook counter misinformation
As President Trump falsely claimed that he has won re-election despite the fact that votes are still being counted, Twitter and Facebook took steps to counter Trump’s attempts to spread misinformation.
“Once President Trump began making premature claims of victory, we started running notifications on Facebook and Instagram that votes are still being counted and a winner is not projected,” Facebook said. “We’re also automatically applying labels to both candidates’ posts with this information.”
Trump gave a speech in which he claimed “we did win this election” and called the continued counting of legally cast votes “a major fraud on our nation.” He said he will take the election to the Supreme Court and that “we want all voting to stop.”
Trump used social-media platforms to spread the falsehood that votes being counted after election night is the same as votes being cast after polls close. In fact, it was known in advance that many states wouldn’t count votes quickly enough to declare a winner on election night and that it could take days to determine whether Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden will win the electoral college. Additionally, numerous states count mailed ballots delivered by the US Postal Service a week or more after polls close as long as the ballots are postmarked by election day.
But Trump claimed on both Twitter and Facebook that “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!” Twitter added a disclaimer to the tweet saying that “some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.” Twitter’s disclaimer includes a link to Twitter’s policy against using the platform to “manipulat[e] or interfere[e] in elections or other civic processes.”
Trump says counting votes is “VERY STRANGE”
In another post that Facebook added a disclaimer to, Trump wrote:
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!
Facebook’s disclaimer on the post pointed out that “Final results may be different from the initial vote counts, as ballot counting will continue for days or weeks after polls close.”
On Twitter, Trump also shared a post in which conservative blogger Matt Walsh called updated vote tallies in Michigan “reason enough to go to court.” Twitter moderated the Walsh tweet with the same disclaimer applied to Trump tweets.
Biden is leading the popular vote and is competitive in battleground states that will ultimately decide which candidate gets enough electoral college votes to win the presidency. Biden wrote on Twitter, “It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare the winner of this election. It’s the voters’ place.” Biden’s vice presidential pick, Kamala Harris, wrote, “This race isn’t over until every single ballot is counted.”
Trump has been trying to stop Twitter and Facebook from fact-checking his posts and recently asked the Federal Communications Commission to step in. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is backing Trump’s proposal to limit legal protections for social-media websites that block or modify content posted by users.
Whether the FCC has authority to do so is under dispute, and FCC Republican Commissioner Michael O’Rielly has said that the FCC must uphold First Amendment speech protections “that apply to corporate entities, especially when they engage in editorial decision making.” Trump is now trying to replace O’Rielly with another Republican who supports his attempted crackdown on social media. Trump winning a second term would give the FCC plenty of time to finalize the plan, but it won’t come soon enough to stop Twitter and Facebook from moderating Trump’s false claims while votes are still being counted.
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1719251