For the first time, Twitter has added a label to tweets from President Trump. The tweets in question relate to mail-in ballots and the president’s claims that mail-in ballots are fraudulent.
Twitter has applied a label to two of President Trump’s tweets, inviting users to “get the facts about mail-in ballots.” Tapping or clicking on the label takes users to a Twitter Moment that explains:
On Tuesday, President Trump made a series of claims about potential voter fraud after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an effort to expand mail-in voting in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. These claims are unsubstantiated, according to CNN, Washington Post and others. Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.
The tweet thread in question from President Trump is below — interestingly the label does not seem to appear on web embeds:
There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
The Washington Post also points out pressure Twitter is facing over other tweets from President Trump:
Twitter’s actions come on a day when Twitter was facing a barrage of criticism over another set of Trump tweets. Earlier on Tuesday the widower of a former staffer to Joe Scarborough asked Twitter chief executive officer Jack Dorsey to delete tweets by President Trump furthering a baseless conspiracy theory about the staffer’s wife’s death.
As for Twitter’s decision to apply a label to the tweets about mail-in ballots, company spokesperson Katie Rosborough said they “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.”
As of right now, President Trump has not responded to the labels applied to his inaccurate tweets about mail-in ballots. [Update: Trump’s response below.]
….Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
Read more:
- Twitter adding labels and warnings to tweets with ‘misleading information’ about COVID-19
- Twitter testing labeling fake news and lies with bright orange warnings, could arrive in March
- Twitter announces new policy to label or ban ‘synthetic and manipulated media’
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