Twitter starts labelling Trump tweets with fact check
Social media site targets US president’s freedom of speech, labeling two of his posts ‘potentially misleading’
Social media platform Twitter labeled two tweets from US President Donald Trump “potentially misleading” Tuesday in a controversial first of its kind fact-checking move.
The label was imposed on tweets Trump posted in the morning claiming “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-in Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent” and would lead to “a rigged election.”
The president’s tweets focused primarily on California’s efforts to expand mail-in voting due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
When a Twitter user sees the tweets, a link from Twitter says “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.”
The link leads to a collection of tweets and news articles selected by Twitter allegedly debunking the president’s statements.
Trump for his part slammed Twitter, accusing the company of interfering in the 2020 US elections.
“Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen,” he vowed in a tweet.
Trump has long been at odds with tech companies, Twitter in particular.
“Twitter is just terrible, what they do. They don’t let you get the word out,” Trump told Fox Business Network last year.
“I’ll tell you what — they should be sued,” he said. “These people are all Democrats. If I announced tomorrow that I’m going to become a nice liberal Democrat, I would pick up five times more followers,” he added.
