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Twitter imposed restrictions on sharing a tweet from President Donald Trump, sparking a high-profile showdown between the president and the platform after Election Day. Facebook has added tags to the president’s posts, saying the final vote count is not yet available.
“We are in a BIG time, but they are trying to STEAL the elections,” says the message on both platforms. “We will never let them do it. No votes can be cast after the polls close! “
The first results were promising for the president, but several key states are still counting votes, including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. This work does not involve additional votes being cast, but rather addresses the unprecedented increase in vote-by-mail ballots that have been officially cast but have yet to be counted.
Reached for comment, Twitter referred to a tweet from the company’s @safety account shortly after the restrictions were put in place. “We put a warning in a tweet by @realDonaldTrump for making a potentially misleading claim about an election,” the tweet read. “This action is in line with our Civic integrity policy. ”
Under Twitter restrictions, users must click a warning box to see the tweet when it appears in the sources and home pages, and they cannot like or reply to the tweet. Retweets are limited to the “quote tweet” feature, where users can only share the message with their own comments.
President Trump posted the same message on Facebook, where the platform added a tag to the post noting that votes are still being counted and directing users to Facebook’s election information center. Facebook has not taken any action to block the spread of the post within its network.
In a separate message on both platforms, Trump appeared to hint at a future announcement without actually announcing victory prematurely. “I will be making a statement tonight. Big PROFIT! ” the post says. No network has taken action against this second post.
Both Twitter and Facebook adopted explicit policies against premature victory announcements in September, and the policies appear to have been enforced as set at the time. Since Sept. 17, Twitter’s disinformation policy has covered premature victory claims, making them eligible for removal by moderators. Facebook’s focus is more limited: It said it would tag election-related posts and redirect viewers to authoritative information. Facebook also placed restrictions on the paid promotion of election-related posts, ensuring that candidates cannot use the company’s ad network to drive complaints.
Earlier in the day, Twitter had placed similar restrictions on a member of Trump’s campaign staff. Mike Roman, the campaign’s director of election day activities, had posted tweets alleging widespread voter fraud in Philadelphia, along with a video that was later labeled as misleading by the city district attorney.
“The spread of misinformation online has led to more calls to the Election Task Force hotline than actual incidents at polling places,” the district attorney’s office told reporters.
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