Twitter, Facebook Flag Donald Trump's US Election Posts as ‘Potentially Misleading’

Twitter and Facebook early Wednesday flagged President Donald Trump's comments on the US presidential election, that remained too close to call.

Twitter said a Trump tweet alleging an effort to steal the election was potentially misleading.

"We placed a warning on a Tweet from @realDonaldTrump for making a potentially misleading claim about an election," Twitter said early Wednesday. Trump said without evidence that "They are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it." Users are also blocked from retweeting the post, however, can still share the same with Quote Tweet.

Facebook also flagged a Trump post that said: "We are up BIG." The social media company said, "Final results may be different from initial vote counts as ballot counting will continue for days or weeks."

In a separate post, Trump said he would make a statement and added: "A big WIN!" Facebook said "Votes are still being counted. The winner of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election has not been projected."

According to a report by Engadget, shortly after Twitter had put up the label on Trump's post, the social media company confirmed that it had broken its rules around “making a potentially misleading claim about an election.”

Twitter and Facebook recently suspended some news accounts that were posting information about voting in the hotly contested US election for violating their policies.

Twitter said the accounts had been suspended for violating its policy against "coordination" by posting identical content while appearing independent or engaging in other covertly automated behaviour.

One of those suspended, SVNewsAlerts, had more than 78,000 Twitter followers, after adding more than 10,000 in the past week. Other accounts suspended by Twitter included FJNewsReporter, Crisis_Intel and Faytuks. Some of the accounts in the past suggested that readers follow the others. Facebook also suspended several accounts behind US-based pages called SV News and FJ News, citing inauthentic behaviour. The SV page had more than 20,000 followers.

© Thomson Reuters 2020

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