[ad_1]
REUTERS: Twitter users searching for the word “loser” on Saturday (November 7) were greeted with an unusual first result: the account of US President Donald Trump.
The search result appeared when major news organizations declared that voters had handed over the presidency to Trump’s opponent, Democrat Joe Biden, after four days of scathing suspense following Tuesday’s election.
Searches for “winner” in the same “People” tab on Twitter, suggesting accounts to follow rather than displaying results from the text of users’ tweets, targeted the accounts of Biden and his running mate, the US senator. Kamala Harris.
Twitter said the results were automatically generated based on how people on the app were using the terms in their tweets at the time.
“If an account is often mentioned in conjunction with certain terms, they can emerge algorithmically as an association. These associations are temporary and constantly change depending on how people tweet,” the company said in a statement.
The “losers” association was a reprimand for a president who for years has used the same social media platform to criticize those he considered “haters and losers.”
Earlier on Saturday, Twitter applied a warning label to a tweet from Trump that, in capital letters, falsely claimed that he had won the election. Facebook also applied a tag to the same post: “Joe Biden is the projected winner of the 2020 US presidential election.”
Social media companies have tagged many of the president’s posts in recent days, after vowing to curb electoral misinformation and premature claims of victory.
