Twitter, Facebook warnings on US presidential election hit both parties

LONDON – Facebook and Twitter flagged some of President Donald Trump’s posts on the US election as votes were still being counted, in a real-time test of their rules on handling misinformation and premature claims of victory.

Twitter also applied labels to posts by Democrat and Republican officials in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Florida, warning users that the information may be contested or inaccurate.

Social media companies have been under fierce scrutiny over how they police rapidly spreading false information and election-related abuses of their platforms. In the weeks before Tuesday’s (Nov 3) vote, both vowed action on posts by candidates trying to declare early victory.

Early on Wednesday, Twitter hid a Trump tweet that claimed “we are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election” behind a label that said it was potentially misleading. The company also restricted users’ ability to share the post.

Facebook added a label to the same post, which had about 18,000 shares, that said “final results may be different from initial vote counts as ballot counting will continue for days or weeks”.

A spokesman for Facebook said it was not restricting the reach or sharing of labelled content. She also said it would not flag premature claims of state wins, only of the final result of the presidential race.

Twitter did not label a separate post, in which Mr Trump declared “A big WIN!,” to which Facebook added a notice that said votes were still being counted.

However, Twitter did flag early victory claims by state-level officials from both parties.

After the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin tweeted that Democratic candidate Joe Biden had secured victory in his state, Twitter attached a notice saying: “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”

The company also flagged earlier posts by a Republican senator and governor which claimed victory for Mr Trump in Florida before the result was confirmed.

Facebook said that following Mr Trump’s premature claims of victory it had started running top-of-feed notifications on Facebook and its photo-sharing site Instagram telling users that votes were still being counted and no winner had been projected.

It said automatic labels were also being applied to both candidates’ posts with this information.

Twitter began adding fact-checking labels to Mr Trump’s tweets in May. Facebook, which has been criticised by some lawmakers and employees for not taking action on inflammatory or misleading posts from the President, has also introduced more labels around the election.

Mr Trump also claimed in a speech live-streamed on both platforms on Wednesday that he had won the election, with millions of votes still uncounted. Mr Biden said earlier he was confident of winning the contest.

Facebook labelled the video, which had 2.6 million views on Wednesday morning, with a warning saying 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’s video service YouTube added a panel that said “results may not be final” to election-related videos and directed users to a Google search for the election results.

False or exaggerated reports about voting fraud and delays at the polls also circulated on social media on Election Day, in some cases helped along by official Republican accounts and online publications.