Twitter on Friday introduced a number of new rules the social media platform is rolling out for the upcoming election.
In what is perhaps the most interesting of the changes, Twitter will not allow Donald Trump nor Joe Biden to declare a victory without official double verification.
“People on Twitter, including candidates for office, may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called,” reads the new rule on Twitter’s blog. “To determine the results of an election in the US, we require either an announcement from state election officials, or a public projection from at least two authoritative, national news outlets that make independent election calls. Tweets which include premature claims will be labeled and direct people to our official US election page.”
In addition, any tweet that tries to interfere with the election on Nov. 3 will be removed.
“Tweets meant to incite interference with the election process or with the implementation of election results, such as through violent action, will be subject to removal. This covers all Congressional races and the Presidential Election,” Twitter states.
The social media platform is also stepping up prompts and more warnings on misleading tweets. Trump has had several posts tagged for misleading and false information both on the election and the coronavirus pandemic.
“We will now add additional warnings and restrictions on tweets with a misleading information label from US political figures (including candidates and campaign accounts), US-based accounts with more than 100,000 followers or that obtain significant engagement,” Twitter states. “People must tap through a warning to see these tweets, and then will only be able to quote tweet; likes, retweets and replies will be turned off, and these tweets won’t be algorithmically recommended by Twitter. We expect this will further reduce the visibility of misleading information, and will encourage people to reconsider if they want to amplify these tweets.”
