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When US President Donald Trump and his allies flooded social media on November 4 with false claims of victory and unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud, social media companies warned users that the presidential election has yet to take place. they had decided.
Posts on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere are imposing a real-time test 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. And in the case of Facebook, the staff rewrote the rules on state wins on the fly.
Critics say that in environments explicitly created to promote instant sharing and viral posting, soft disclaimers aren’t enough.
“We are on the brink of the abyss,” said Jessica Gonzalez, co-executive director of advocacy group Free Press. He said Facebook needed to end “misinformation about our democracy” rather than simply flag it.
“We are testing our experiment in democracy, and Facebook has not done well so far,” González said.
Unfounded and false claims have evolved throughout the day. Initially, Trump said he had won (he has not). Then he said that out of nowhere were hit votes by mail showing up (in fact, they were long awaited). More recently, the Trump campaign claimed that Pennsylvania had won (where votes are still counted).
The claims come as Trump’s leadership in battle states has evaporated as more ballots are counted in Michigan and Wisconsin, a process that has taken longer than usual as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and a turnout. extraordinarily high. Trump’s Democratic challenger Joe Biden is projected to win Wisconsin and Michigan.
The extended count is not a surprise, and neither was the belated switch to 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 followers from repeatedly trying to flood the internet with unsubstantiated allegations of fraud.
Twitter flagged three of Trump’s latest tweets, including one that made a false claim about “surprise ballots,” as potentially “misleading about an election or other civic process.” He also tagged statements by Trump’s son Eric and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany who claimed victory in Pennsylvania with the disclaimer that “official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted. “
Facebook also flagged several posts by the president because votes were still being counted.
Even if the disclaimers are curbing the spread of misinformation on their platforms, they haven’t stopped other outlets from amplifying Trump’s comments or his claims jumping from one platform to another.
On Fox News, Trump’s tweets were read verbatim on November 4, sometimes without warnings 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 respond to 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 the Nov. 3 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 on Nov. 4, when Twitter hid a tweet from Trump saying “we’re in a BIG time, 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 25,000 shares, that said “the final results may be different from the initial vote counts as the vote count will continue for days or weeks.”
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. – Reuters
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