Twitter to flag Trump, Biden tweets if they claim early victory on Election Day

SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter said Friday it will flag tweets from President Trump, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden or any other political candidate who claims victory in the 2020 election before their race is “authoritatively called.”

The policy is meant to prevent any candidate from using the social media platform to “manipulate or interfere in elections or other civic processes,” executives said in a blog post. Twitter will consider a race “called” after either an announcement from state election officials or a victory projection from “at least two authoritative, national news outlets.”

“Under this policy, we will label Tweets that falsely claim a win for any candidate and will remove Tweets that encourage violence or call for people to interfere with election results or the smooth operation of polling places,” the blog post said.

Flagged tweets will direct users to Twitter’s U.S. elections landing page. Twitter expanded restrictions on tweets from political candidates or campaigns that are labeled for misinformation, disabling the ability to “retweet” or “like” the posts and requiring users to click through a warning label in order to view them.

In a bid to slow the spread of misinformation on its platform, Twitter will prompt users to “quote tweet” rather than “retweet” posts beginning on Oct. 20. The company said that policy will remain in place through “at least the end of election week,” at which point it will be reassessed.

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Twitter and other U.S. tech firms have taken steps to secure their platforms after critics said they failed to do enough to curtail misinformation ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Earlier this week, Facebook said it would label posts from political candidates who claimed “premature victory.” The social media giant announced last month that it would not allow candidates or campaigns to post ads declaring victory until results were final.

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