Twitter adds a warning label fact-checking Trumps false voting claims

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Twitter adds a warning label fact-checking Trump’s false voting claims

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On the heels of a furor over his tweets accusing MSNBC host Joe Scarborough of murder, Twitter has quietly begun to fact-check the president.

A new warning label encouraging Twitter users to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” appeared on a series of tweets in which the president baselessly claimed ballots received through mail-in voting methods are “fraudulent.”

In a statement to TechCrunch, a Twitter spokesperson said the pair of tweets from the president “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots.”

“This decision is in line with the approach we shared earlier this month,” the spokesperson said, linking to the company’s recent blog post on its misinformation policies.

Clicking through the new prompt from Twitter brings users to a fact-checking page highlighting a CNN story debunking the president’s false claims. The page also offers a summary with bullet points providing useful context for the misleading tweets, including the fact that vote-by-mail is already widely in use around the country.

Trump has railed against vote-by-mail efforts in recent weeks, in spite of the consensus view by experts that voting through the mail is a safe process—so safe that it’s already widely used for absentee ballots and relied upon in five states as the primary method for voting.

Twitter plans to expand its misinformation labels — but will they apply to Trump?

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May 26, 2020 at 05:05PM