The U.S. Presidential Elections are underway and Twitter has limited another one of Trump’s tweets, labeling it ‘disputed.’ The platform has limited the user’s ability to interact with the tweet, deeming it “misleading about an election or other civic process.” Gizmodo reported the development.
Social media has paid special attention to the U.S. elections this year, preferring to block out entire features to avoid future blames of manipulation. This new vigilantism required some degree of censorship for President Trump’s posts as well. The Donald Trump-Twitter relations turned sour when the platform fact-checked his tweets. Now, just hours before the election, another one of his tweets was flagged by the platform.
“Disputed” and “Misleading”
In a tweet made yesterday, Trump posted about the Supreme Court’s decision to extend the deadline for the reception of election ballots. Trump said the “decision on voting in Pennsylvania is a VERY dangerous one.” He went further and claimed the decision would help in “rampant and unchecked cheating,” which is an unsubstantiated claim.
If this were not enough, Trump even claimed that the move would “induce violence in the streets.” Twitter acted and limited the reach of the tweet, posting a link to an article describing how voting by mail is safe and secure. A similar move was made by Facebook.
No Alarms And No Surprises
There are several of President Trump’s tweets that he made despite fact-checks proving them wrong. So I take it that the U.S. President is aware of his claims, but still doesn’ think it’s important to add context, or correct them. Here’s what I found on the U.S. President’s Twitter handle.
Why it should be flagged: Biden never used the term. The Statesman did a fact-check on the tweet and found the claim baseless, again.
Another red flag coming up for this one. Posted on election day, this tweet went unchecked at the time of writing this article. Inquirer has done a piece on how Trump’s stance on Biden’s oil strategy is oversimplified.
The 700% increase that Trump refers to here is because the current government brought down the immigrant numbers. Otherwise, the numbers are in line with U.S. history, says a fact-check on the claim by Kare 11.
This is another Tweet that should be flagged before the election process is completed. It’s misleading because Biden’s policy doesn’t raise taxes for the middle-class and the masses. It raises corporate taxes from 21-28%, reversing Trump’s tax waiver given to corporates. A fact-check on this one was done by The Washington Post.
And we have a winner! The final nail in the coffin! This one is a contextual blunder of sorts. Not sure if Trump is trying to brag that the U.S. has good testing for COVID-19, or if he’s blaming the tests for the spread of COVID. Nonetheless, a study by Cornell found that Trump was “likely the largest driver of COVID-19 misinformation.”
These are just the top 5 tweets of Donald Trump that we found misguiding. If the fact-check on these and other tweets goes unchecked, who knows what misinformation might influence the votes.
The post Twitter Limits Trump’s Another Tweet: We Found 5 More That Should Be Flagged appeared first on Fossbytes.