Once again, Twitter is making itself the arbiter of truth. Twitter has announced a new policy that will go through inauguration day in which they will put a warning label on Trump’s tweets if he declares victory before the official results have been announced:
CNN – Twitter will apply a warning label to tweets by US political candidates, campaigns and other highly visible accounts that attempt to claim victory before official results have been declared, the company said Monday.
“Beginning on election night through the inauguration, we will label some Tweets that make claims about election results,” Twitter said in a blog post. “We will be prioritizing the presidential election and other highly contested races where there may be significant issues with misleading information based on the below criteria.”
In addition to US candidates and campaigns, the policy will apply to Twitter accounts with more than 100,000 followers.It will also extend to tweets that are receiving a high level of engagement, which is defined as 25,000 or more likes or retweets.
That’s right, it’s not just Trump’s account they will be labeling. It’s anyone with a certain level of influence who claims that Trump has won.
Of course they couch this in the notion that they will do this to ‘any candidate’, but we all know this is really about Trump.
So what is the standard for ‘official results’ Twitter says it will be using?
Twitter also said it will consider an election result official when two separate national news outlets declare a winner. The list of news outlets Twitter is relying on includes ABC News, the AP, CBS News, CNN, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News and NBC News.
Well I’m glad to see Decision Desk HQ on the list, but overall I really detest Twitter’s labeling system and I’m sure they won’t be using it fairly.