Twitter has again acted against one of President Donald Trump’s posts this weekend. Hours after Trump put up a tweet claiming, among other lies, that drop boxes for absentee/ mail-in ballots could facilitate the spread of the Coronavirus, the platform flagged the tweet with a message indicating that the post “violated the Twitter Rules about civic and election integrity.” When viewing the tweet, that message now pops up first, and users have to click “view” to see the post. As the Twitter company noted in an explanatory post, their platform prohibits users from sharing “false and misleading information intended to intimidate or dissuade people from participating in an election or other civic process.”
Per our policies, this Tweet will remain on the service given its relevance to ongoing public conversation. Engagements with the Tweet will be limited. People will be able to Retweet with Comment, but not Like, Reply, or Retweet it. pic.twitter.com/USuaRr5ING
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) August 23, 2020
It’s staggering, of course, that this “false and misleading information” came from the president of the United States. In his original lie-riddled post, he said:
‘So now the Democrats are using Mail Drop Boxes, which are a voter security disaster. Among other things, they make it possible for a person to vote multiple times. Also, who controls them, are they placed in Republican or Democrat areas? They are not Covid sanitized. A big fraud!’
Drop boxes for ballots — which the Trump campaign sued Pennsylvania authorities over after they were used in the state’s primary election — are not a “voter security disaster.” They do not “make it possible for a person to vote multiple times.” They just don’t. The same security and verification measures that are in place for other absentee/ mail-in ballots are in place for ballots left in a drop box. If more than one ballot came in under the same name, for instance, election authorities would notice! That’s literally their job. Is Trump even truly familiar with those security measures? Is he simply trying to mask his glaring incompetence with these conspiracy theories?
Twitter has officially hidden Trump’s post this morning. They say it violates Twitter’s rules against blatant voter suppression. https://t.co/8iX6e6FTgF
— Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) August 23, 2020
Twitter, for its part, noted the “misleading health claims” aspect of the president’s tweet in an explanation for its action, which the company faced criticism for taking hours to undertake in the first place. There is no evidence indicating that drop boxes could facilitate the spread of the Coronavirus. Trump just seems to be pulling out all the stops as part of his paranoia about his potentially looming general election loss.
Now there will be headlines about Twitter's action. But those stories should note how long it took Twitter to take action on a rules violation. If a house is set on fire & the fire dept responds 5hrs later, the headline isn't that the dept responded. It's about the time it took.
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) August 23, 2020
