For the first time, Twitter urged users to test U.S. President Donald Trump's statements in tweets. The social media warned that his arguments about mail-in ballots were misleading and refuted by fact-checkers.
The move marked a dramatic shift for the social network, Trump's primary tool to get an unfiltered version of his message out to his political base after years of lax policy on its platform's content.
Free speech comes with great responsibility
In recent years, the company has tightened these policies amid criticism that its hands-off approach has enabled abuse, fake accounts, and misinformation to thrive.
Trump, who has more than 80 million followers on Twitter, claimed in tweets earlier that mail-in ballots would be "substantially fraudulent" and result in a "rigged election." He also singled out the governor of California over the issue. However, the state is not the only one to use mail-in ballots.
"Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!" he wrote on Twitter.
....Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
Hours later, Twitter posted a blue exclamation mark alert underneath those tweets. It prompted readers to "get the facts about mail-in ballots" and directing them to a page with information aggregated by Twitter staffers about the claims.
"Trump makes [an] unsubstantiated claim that mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud," a headline at the top of the page stated. It was followed by a "what you need to know" section addressing three specific claims made in the tweets.
Trump posted the same text about mail-in ballots on his official Facebook page, where the post picked up 170,000 reactions and was shared 17,000 times.
Facebook's policy is to remove content that misrepresents methods of voting or voter registration. Still, in this case, it left the post untouched.
"We believe that people should be able to have a robust debate about the electoral process, which is why we have crafted our policies to focus on misrepresentations that would interfere with the vote," a Facebook spokesperson told Reuters.
Misleading information
Twitter said applying a fact-checking label to the president's tweets was an extension of its new "misleading information" policy.
The rule was introduced earlier this month to fight coronavirus misinformation. It said it would apply the COVID-19 strategy to certain forms of contested or false information later.
So far, Twitter has used its policies sparingly against political figures. However, it has deleted tweets from the Brazilian and Venezuelan presidents, which it said violated its coronavirus rules.
The company's warning on Trump's tweets came hours after it failed to act on separate tweets that Trump sent for Joe Scarborough on the death of a former congressional staff member in 2001. Her widow begged the company to delete them for falsified allegations to proceed.
A spokesman for Twitter told Reuters Trump's mail-in ballot tweets were related to the integrity of the election and, therefore, subject to different treatment under its policies.
Asked about the Scarborough tweets, a Twitter spokeswoman said the company is improving its products and policies to deal more effectively with these tweets in the future.
