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REUTERS: Twitter Inc said on Friday that it will remove tweets asking people to interfere with the United States election process or implementation of election results, including through violence, as the company also announced more restrictions to curb the spread of misinformation.
Twitter said in a blog post that starting next week, users will receive a message telling them credible information before they can retweet content that has been tagged as misleading.
It said it would add more warnings and restrictions to misleadingly tagged tweets from US political figures such as candidates and campaigns, as well as US accounts with more than 100,000 followers or getting “significant engagement.”
Twitter, which recently told Reuters it was testing how to make its tagging more obvious and direct, said people will have to tap on the warnings to see these tweets. Users can also ‘quote tweet’ this content as likes, retweets and replies will be disabled.
Twitter says it has tagged thousands of misleading posts, although most of the attention has focused on the tags applied to tweets by US President Donald Trump. Twitter also said it would tag tweets that falsely claim a win for any candidate.
The company announced several temporary steps to slow content amplification: For example, from October 20 until at least the end of US election week, global users who hit “retweet” will be directed to the button first. “quote tweet” to encourage people. to add your own comment.
It will also stop displaying trending topics without additional context and prevent people from seeing recommendations from people they don’t know on your timeline that you like.
Twitter’s decision to curb automated recommendations stands in contrast to the approach of Facebook Inc, which is expanding promotion of its group’s product despite concerns about extremism in those spaces.
Social media companies are under pressure to combat election-related misinformation and prepare for the possibility of violence or intimidation at polling places around the November 3 vote.
Reuters has reported that Republicans are mobilizing thousands of volunteers to monitor early voting sites and polls for evidence to support Trump’s unsubstantiated complaints about widespread voter fraud.
On Wednesday, Facebook said it would ban calls to view polls using “militarized language.”
(Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford; Additional reporting by Katie Paul; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Richard Chang)
