Half Of Trump’s Twitter And Facebook Posts Since Election Day Flagged

Topline

Facebook and Twitter have labeled half of President Donald Trump’s posts since Election Day because he repeatedly and falsely declared victory and cast doubt on legal votes counted after Election Day.

President Donald Trump speaks on election night in the East Room of the White House in the early … [+] morning hours of November 04, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Key Facts

Of Trump’s 22 posts on Facebook and Twitter, not including retweets or videos, 11 have been labeled by the social media giants.

The flagged posts include erroneous claims to victory before races have been officially called and false assertions that the election is fraudulent.

Twitter has hidden posts from view and warned “some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process,” and restricted the ability to like or retweet.

Facebook warned users underneath Trump posts that “final votes may different from the initial vote counts” or “elections officials follow strict rules when it comes to ballot counting, handling and reporting”—but still allows users to share and comment.

Twitter also labeled tweets both from Trump aides and Democratic Party operatives prematurely declaring victory in states before any official sources called the race.

Twitter label — Twitter’s label actually hides the tweet from view.

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Facebook label — A labeled Trump post from Facebook.

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Key Background

Facebook and Twitter prepared for a drawn-out election and sought to limit the spread of misinformation, fearing a repeat of 2016. In the weeks leading up to the election Facebook and Twitter specifically created policies for premature claims of victory and messaging around vote counts after Election Day.

Chief Critics

But Republicans have lambasted efforts to combat misinformation as censorship against conservatives. Especially after Twitter’s New York Post fiasco, GOP lawmakers are taking aim at Section 230, a legal provision that ensures tech companies can’t be held liable for the posts on their platforms. Trump supporters, unsurprisingly, criticized Twitter especially for “censorship.”

Tangent

Though Facebook and Twitter labeled Trump’s posts, that didn’t stop disinformation from other sources. Eric Trump tweeted out a misleading video claiming that ballots supporting the president were being burned—but officials say they were sample ballots and not official votes. And a post went viral on Twitter falsely asserting that 400,000 ballots in DeKalb County, Georgia needed to be fixed by voters before they could count.