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(Reuters) – Tech companies are trying to curb a surge in electoral misinformation in the United States, and President Donald Trump and his allies are turning to social media to falsely claim victory and make unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud.
Trump’s accusations come as some states on the battlefield are legally processing provisional and mail ballots, a process that is taking longer than usual as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and extraordinarily high turnout.
The extended count is no surprise, and neither is the shift toward Trump’s opponent Joe Biden, which was widely predicted in the run-up to the vote, including by Reuters.
That didn’t stop Trump and his supporters, whose headline in states like Michigan and Wisconsin has melted as mail ballots are counted, from repeatedly trying to flood the internet with unsubstantiated allegations of fraud.
Twitter Inc marked three of Trump’s latest tweets, including one that made a false claim about “surprise ballot rolls,” as potentially “misleading about an election or other civic process.” Facebook Inc also flagged several posts from the president as votes were still being counted.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The president’s posts, and those of his supporters, are real-time proof of Silicon Valley’s much-touted rules on handling electoral disinformation and premature claims of victory. But it’s unclear whether disclaimers and fact-checks, which often occur long after posts have been shared tens of thousands of times, are curbing the circulation of unsubstantiated claims.
The Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of research groups, said that following Trump’s unsubstantiated claim of victory at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, there was a notable spike in online conversations about voter fraud, with verified users of Twitter and supporters who used the phrase “stop the robbery.”
Even if the disclaimers slowed the spread of misinformation on their platforms, they haven’t stopped other outlets from amplifying Trump’s comments or his claims of jumping from one platform to another.
On Fox News, Trump’s tweets were read literally Wednesday, sometimes with no qualifications about their veracity. And on the video-sharing site TikTok, a group called Republican Hype House shared a video with a false claim that Michigan found 138,000 ballots in a lake.
TikTok said the video was later removed for violating its policy against misleading information. Fox did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
Social media companies have come under scrutiny over how they control the rapid spread of false information and election-related abuse of their platforms. In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s vote, the two vowed to take action on the positions of candidates attempting to declare an early victory.
Attempts to police those remarks began early Wednesday, when Twitter hid a tweet from Trump that said “We’re BIG, but they’re trying to STEAL the election” behind a tag that said it was potentially misleading. The company also restricted users’ ability to share the post.
Facebook added a tag to the same post, which had around 23,000 shares, that said “the final results may be different from the initial vote counts as the vote count will continue for days or weeks.”
A Facebook spokeswoman said that, unlike Twitter, it was not restricting the reach or sharing of tagged content. He also said he would not point to premature claims of state victories, only the result of the presidential race.
Jessica González, co-executive director of the advocacy group Free Press, said that was not enough and that Facebook needed to eliminate, not just point out, “disinformation about our democracy.”
“We are on the edge of the abyss. We are testing our experiment in democracy and Facebook has not done well so far,” González said.
Facebook said that after Trump’s premature victory claims, it began posting notifications to the top of the net on Facebook and its photo-sharing site Instagram, telling users that votes were still being counted and had not been projected. no winner. He said automatic tags were also being applied to both candidates’ posts with this information.
Twitter also pointed to early victory claims from state officials on both sides, as well as high-profile social media accounts that echoed Trump’s claim of premature victory and his unsubstantiated allegations of fraud.
Congresswoman-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has voiced support for the QAnon conspiracy theory, sent several tweets promoting the false narrative that Democrats were “stealing” the election. His posts were later tagged by Twitter.
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, also shared tweets with unfounded allegations of voter fraud.
The claim of the president’s false victory was also streamed live on both platforms, with millions of votes yet to be counted. Biden previously said he was confident of winning.
Facebook tagged the video, which had 9.1 million views Wednesday morning, with a warning that the vote counting could continue for days or weeks. The video had no label or warning on Twitter, where it was posted by the Trump campaign and retweeted by the president.
Alphabet Inc’s video service YouTube added a panel saying “results may not be final” to the election-related videos and directed users to a Google search for the election results.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford in Birmingham, England, Paresh Dave in San Francisco and Jack Stubbs in London. Written by Raphael Satter in Washington. Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Katie Paul in Palo Alto; Editing by Giles Elgood and Lisa Shumaker)
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