Twitter has announced additional measures to curb interference in the U.S. electoral process, including tagging candidates’ tweets claiming victory before official announcement of results.
In a blog post on Friday, the company said the measures include more labels and restrictions to check misinformation surrounding the Nov. 3 polls.
“Under this policy, we will label Tweets that falsely claim a win for any candidate.
“We will remove Tweets that encourage violence or call for people to interfere with election results or the smooth operation of polling places.
“More specifically, people on Twitter, including candidates for office, may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called.
“To determine the results of an election in the US, we require either an announcement from state election officials, or a public projection from at least two authoritative, national news outlets that make independent election calls.
“Tweets which include premature claims will be labeled and direct people to our official U.S. election page,” it said.
The company said it would also delete tweets calling for people to interfere with the election process or announcement of election results, including through violence.
“Tweets meant to incite interference with the election process or with the implementation of election results, such as through violent action, will be subject to removal.
“This covers all Congressional races and the Presidential Election,” it added.
Twitter said it had also added new prompts and more warnings on misleading tweets about “civic integrity, COVID-19, and synthetic and manipulated media”.
It said with effect from next week, when people attempt to retweet a labeled tweet, they would see a prompt directing them to credible information about the topic before they could share it.
“Tweets with labels are already de-amplified through our own recommendation systems .
“These new prompts will give individuals more context on labeled Tweets so they can make more informed decisions on whether or not they want to amplify them to their followers,” it said.
This step is coming amid reports that Republicans are mobilising thousands of volunteers to watch early voting sites and ballot drop boxes.
According to the reports, they are looking for evidence to back up President Donald Trump’s “unsubstantiated complaints” about widespread voter fraud.
