UPDATED 23:27 EDT / OCTOBER 26 2020

POLICY

Twitter launches preemptive messages to warn of election misinformation

Twitter Inc. announced today that users in the U.S. will start seeing messages on their timeline that “preemptively debunk” misinformation relating to the election.

The messages will appear in the form of banners when people search for election information, such as claims about mail-in voting or premature claims about victory. The company seems to have listened to critics who lambasted Twitter in the past for not taking a more proactive approach to battling the spread of misinformation.

“With the 2020 US general election approaching on November 3, experts and fact-checkers have continued to assure American voters that voting by mail is a safe and secure option, especially in the middle of a pandemic,” one of the messages reads. Users are then invited to hit another button leading to more information.

This last move is one of a series of steps Twitter has taken of late to combat untruths being disseminated on its platform. The company already takes down tweets that proffer false information about voting and it has removed accounts of so-called bad actors who want to interfere with the election.

Facebook Inc. has said it will ban all political ads after the polls close, and it too will post banners on people’s news feeds giving them reliable information as to who has won or if any delays have occurred. Users will first be directed to the Voting Information Center, Facebook said, but if any candidate announces victory prior to the final result, the banners will be unleashed.

It’s reported that this year there will be more mail-in ballots than ever before, which means that the votes will take longer to be counted. These new measures by both companies are aimed at preventing chaos from happening prior to that final count.

“People rely on Twitter for accurate, credible information about how to vote, and the latest election news, and we believe it’s critical that we make it easy for people to find that information,” Twitter said in a statement to the media. “We also know that people may intentionally or unintentionally spread misleading information about these topics, which we have expanded our policies to address.”

Photo: Marco Verch/Flickr

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