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Nearly half of Trump’s tweets since election day have been flagged as misleading by Twitter

Seven out of the past 18 posts have been censured

Adam Smith
Thursday 05 November 2020 18:50 GMT
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Nearly half of Donald Trump’s tweets since the presidential election have had to be flagged by Twitter.

Mr Trump has tweeted false messages about political rivals stealing the election, questioned the integrity of the ballot counters, baselessly claimed that ballots are being secretly dumped, and claimed victories in swing states where votes continue to be counted.

Seven out of the past 18 tweets since the election required flagging.

In his most recent tweet, the president said that votes that came in after election day would not be counted; this is not true, and numerous states have continued counting after election day in previous races.

Including election day itself, one sixth of Mr Trump’s 55 tweets have contained misinformation.

Twitter has flagged numerous posts with a message stating that “some or all of the content” shared in the president’s tweets are “disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process”.

It also adds links to information pages about election security with articles from reputable sources such as the Associated Press, which also calls the state once the votes are tallied.

For tweets regarding victory in states, Twitter states that “official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted” underneath.

Twitter has been planning for the spread of misinformation and disinformation on its platform since September.

The company said it would label or remove information which might undermine confidence in the election, such as “unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying, or certification of election results.”

President Trump has also made numerous attacks against the integrity of the election in speeches and at rallies.

At time of writing, Joe Biden leads with the greatest number of electoral votes. Many White House staff have long considered the possibility that should he lose, Mr Trump would not leave the White House.

On Facebook, the president has made similar claims. Mr Trump’s claims of victory in swing states resulted in the platform extending its disinformation policies.

Previously, Facebook had only been flagging posts that claimed victory for either Mr Trump or his Democrat rival Joe Biden on a national level.

With seven states left to call, it has now said it will flag false claims of victory on a state level too

However, Donald Trump is still popular on the platform. In a 24-hour period, two untrue claims about election results shared by the president were the most popular posts on the platform

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