Twitter on Monday detailed the steps that it will take to prevent misinformation on the platform ahead of the 2020 United States Elections.
The platform is taking additional steps ahead of election night.
“Because this is an unusual election — restrictions in response to Covid-19 have led to historically high numbers of mail-in ballots, which may result in some state results not being resolved on election night — we are taking additional steps to provide context when results have not been officially called,” Twitter said in an official blog post.
“We may label tweets, starting on election night, that make claims about election results before they’re officially called. We’ll be prioritising the presidential election and other highly contested races where there may be significant issues with misleading information,” it said in a tweet posted from its Support account.
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The microblogging platform will label tweets from accounts that have a US 2020 candidate label (including presidential candidates and campaigns). Misleading tweets from US-based accounts with more than 100k followers or those with “significant engagement” such as 25k likes or 25k Quote Tweets + Retweets are also eligible to be labelled.
The social media platform further said that it will only consider an election result eligible when it has been announced by a state election official, or when calls are made by at least two national news outlets that have dedicated, independent election decision desks. These include ABC, Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, DecisionDeskHQ, Fox News and NBC News.
As for retweets, “When people attempt to Retweet a Tweet with a misleading information label, they’ll see a prompt pointing them to credible information before they are able to amplify it further on Twitter,” it said.
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“If we see content inciting interference with the election, encouraging violent action or other physical harms, we may take additional measures, such as adding a warning or requiring the removal of Tweets,” it added.
Facebook has announced similar policies in a bid to prevent misinformation. It will run a notification at the top of Facebook and Instagram and apply labels to candidates’ posts directing users to its Voting Information Centre, it had said in a blog post.
In case a projected winner has been declared by a major media outlet before results are announced, it will add more specific information in the notifications stating that counting is still in progress and no winner has been determined. It will add the source of the information within the notification.