Twitter has labeled a tweet from President Trump in which he questioned the use of mail drop boxes for the November election. The president claimed, without citing evidence, that the boxes made it “possible for a person to vote multiple times,” and are a “voter security disaster,” that “are not Covid sanitized.”
Twitter applied a label to the Sunday morning tweet that reads “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about civic and election integrity. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.” A “learn more” link goes to Twitter’s rules about public-interest exceptions.
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“We placed a public interest interstitial on this Tweet for violating our Civic Integrity Policy, for making misleading health claims that could potentially dissuade people from participation in voting,” a Twitter spokesperson said in an email to The Verge on Sunday. “We’ve taken action given the Tweet violates our Rules, but have kept the Tweet on Twitter because it is important that the public still be able to see the Tweet given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance.”
Engagement with the tweet will be limited, the spokesperson added: “As is standard with this notice, engagements with the Tweet will be limited. People will be able to Retweet with Comment, but will not be able to Like, Reply or Retweet it.”
It’s not the first time one of the president’s tweets has been flagged for posting inaccurate information about voting and the election. On May 26th, Twitter labeled two tweets from the president’s account for making false statements about mail-in voting, the first time the platform had fact-checked Trump’s tweets. The tweets in question falsely claimed that “mail-in ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent” and would result in “a rigged election.” Twitter labeled the tweets “potentially misleading,” adding that “fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud.”
UPDATE August 23rd 1:01PM ET: Added comment from Twitter spokesperson.
