Twitter will remove tweets calling for people to interfere with the US election process or implementation of election results, including through violence, as the company also announced more restrictions to slow the spread of misinformation. Users will get a prompt pointing them to credible information before they can retweet content that has been labeled as misleading.
It said it would add more warnings and restrictions on tweets with misleading information labels from US political figures like candidates and campaigns, as well as US-based accounts with more than 100,000 followers or that get “significant engagement.” Twitter was testing how to make its labeling more obvious and direct, said people will have to tap through warnings to see these tweets. Users can also only ‘quote tweet’ this content, as likes, retweets, and replies will be turned off. Twitter also said it would label tweets that falsely claim a win for any candidate. It will also stop surfacing trending topics without added context and will stop people from seeing “liked by” recommendations from people they do not know in their timeline.
Twitter’s decision to hit the brakes on automated recommendations contrasts with the approach at Facebook Inc, which is amping up promotion of its group product despite concerns about extremism in those spaces. Social media companies are under pressure to combat election-related misinformation and prepare for the possibility of violence or poll place intimidation around the November 3 vote. Facebook said it would ban calls for poll watching using “militarized language.”
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