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Twitter adds label to Trump's misleading tweets about mail-in ballots:
Twitter said Tuesday that it added a label to President Donald Trump's tweets for containing "potentially misleading information about voting processes," a rare move that shows the social media company is taking a tougher stance against misinformation.
It's the first time that Twitter has displayed a label on Trump's tweets.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that "There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-in-Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent," a claim that has been debunked by fact-checkers and news organizations. He continues his remarks in another tweet, stating that it will be a "Rigged election."
A label appears under both tweets that states "Get the facts about mail-in ballots." Clicking on the warning notice directs users to a page that states that fact-checkers say there isn't any evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud. Trump also falsely states in the tweets that California will send mail-in ballots to "anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there" when only registered voters will receive ballots. States such as Oregon, Utah and Washington have long conducted elections by mail only, while states such as Nebraska allow any voter to request a ballot and vote by mail without having to provide a reason.
A Twitter spokeswoman said in a statement that the decision is in line with how the company approaches misinformation on its site, which includes adding warning notices and labels depending on the likelihood and severity of harm a tweet could cause.
Twitter's actions against Trump's tweets will also likely increase tensions between the company and conservative users, who allege that the social network suppresses their speech. Twitter has repeatedly denied those allegations. Earlier this month, Trump tweeted that the "Radical Left" is in control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google and said his administration is working on a solution.
In two tweets, Trump accused Twitter of interfering in the 2020 US presidential election.
"Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!," he tweeted.
Also at BBC News, Ars Technica, MIT Technology Review
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday May 27 2020, @12:54PM (53 children)
Errrr... really? President? Wouldn't Chairman, General Secretary or Fuhrer be more appropriate a title just because you want so?
Look, there's no obligation for a private entity to promote (or not stifle) free speech.
You want such an obligation, pass a law; I doubt tho' that such a law would pass the constitutionality test or that you will even like the many ways in which such a law can be abused against you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:02PM (35 children)
My history may be failing me here but were Chairman Mao or der Führer well known for promoting freedom of speech?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:04PM
My Hitler Youth scout master said Hitler did nothing wrong.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:06PM (24 children)
They were famous for promoting their free speech.
As it is the present case too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:18PM (19 children)
That is the argument though, those of higher cognitive ability [psypost.org] understand that by opposing free speech for others they are ultimately censoring themselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:13PM (14 children)
Is it really a violation of your free speech if, when using a companies assets to communicate, they append a correction to your statement?
Is it not their free speech right to say, "no, Mr President, you are wrong."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:49PM (12 children)
That's been a complaint from the left for a while, "conservatives want to speak without criticism" they say. Here we have a "fact-check" proven wrong the same week by an arrest for election fraud. Indeed, a bipartisan 2005 commission headed by Jimmy Carter concluded "Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud". What remains is that Twitter used their platform to contradict a sitting president and willfully mislead the public when following the president on Twitter is a constitutional right. [reuters.com]
Twitter should stick their "fact check" as a reply like the legions of full time reply guys already do. A company can't place an incorrect, pseudo-authorative "fact check" on a constitutionally protected tweet and pretend like you're not interfering with freedom of expression. "Congress shall make no law abridging" but the inverse is not true.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VanessaE on Wednesday May 27 2020, @03:03PM (11 children)
Twitter is not a part of Congress, nor any other branch of the US federal government. There is no law being made here, and Trump has no rights under the First Amendment to force Twitter to publish his remarks. Maybe there's some existing federal law regulating the publication of official presidential communications, but the First is not it, and I highly doubt that law applies to media like Twitter (versus, say, the New York Times).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @03:36PM (10 children)
Trump is the sitting president, citizens have a constitutional right to reply to him. Twitter have no explicit right to amend or editorialize his tweets, the Hudson test for "commercial speech" explicitly refers to "communication more likely to deceive the public than to inform it". Twitter and the "fact checkers" represent commercial entities and forfeit constitutional protection when they are wrong (as was the case here). It's very much about the 1st.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:14PM (9 children)
If only you'd put this much effort into the problem of caging children and the like. Nope, you save it for defending Trump spouting fascist lies. Saddest timeline.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @05:00PM (8 children)
You're referring to the "cages" built by former president Obama in his second term?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @05:35PM (6 children)
Bbbbut OBAMA!
lol, you fools are losing it so hard. I'm not sure what else to add here, your excuses and arguments have become so pathetic in the last year or so.
Anecdotally I think it was around the impeachment hearings. Reality was asserted, and the GOP went full-blown Bond villains. Somewhere in the recesses of your gray matter you know the truth, so this gibbering nonsense is the best your brain can come up with. Shitty attempts at correllation == causation, and other bastardizations of logic and reason. Hell, you can't even hang on to the basic morality of Jesus, so meh to you and your insanity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @06:56PM (5 children)
This. The partisan democrat. Blind to the log in his eye.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @09:07PM (3 children)
Gaslight
Obstruct
Project!
The idiot's way =)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @10:37PM (2 children)
"Trump caged the kids!!" "Obama caged the kids!!" "There's a log in your eye!!!" "Idiot, fool, gaslighter!!"
Two utterly irrelevant neck beards shouting at each other across a picket line.
Don't stop- this is fun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @11:07PM (1 child)
I enjoy watching their neck flaps quiver in rage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2020, @01:31AM
I thought you were one of those darn kids after me lucky neck meats! They're always after me neck meats dontcha know!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2020, @12:27AM
Well I don't know about you idiots but I'm still pretty enthused about electing a female president, so I'll be voting Libertarian this year.... So now that I've established which political party has my vote in November...
The D team is laying the groundwork for heavy-handed internet censorship in the name of "correcting the record" or someshit. So that's not good.
Then we have the R team building the social base for an actual fascist movement on the one hand (which will give you heavy-handed internet censorship--listen to the Mises Institute), and on the other hand are antics like these that lend legitimacy to the D team's hard-on about controlling social media.
Both of you have logs in your eyes. It's why you can't see what the uniparty is doing to you. Heavy-handed internet censorship is coming one way or another. The frog is almost boiled.
As a test: what should we do with all that content on the internet that's corrupting our youth and turning them into trannies? Shouldn't we fact-check it? Shouldn't we correct the record?
feh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @07:18PM
"Thanks, Obamagate!"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:18PM
You have the right to free speech. You don't have the right to use My megaphone.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:32PM (3 children)
Twitter said something about a Trump tweet.
People seem to be opposed to it.
So remind me, who are the ones opposing free speech?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 27 2020, @08:09PM (2 children)
In my younger years, I got to experience a protest where some folks were attempting to drown out a speaker with shouts of "Free Speech! Free Speech!" Apparently, a lot of people have a rule of "MY speech should be free and amplified as loudly as possible, but YOUR speech has to be silenced".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday May 28 2020, @03:30AM (1 child)
Awesome post. I hate the underlying conundrum, but what a great dose of bitter irony. It's pretty much what's going on in society, and each side is getting louder and louder.
Do they have political parties on Antarctica?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2020, @08:40AM
You should get out more. The only loud thing around this neighborhood is TVs.
(Score: 1, Informative) by hemocyanin on Wednesday May 27 2020, @03:51PM (3 children)
LOL -- you just described Twitter and the way it is moving toward only allowing approved speech.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:01PM (2 children)
So what? Twitter is not Trump and Trump is not Twitter.
Twitter is a private enterprise, you don't like it, you don't use it - if enough are doing it, Twitter will fail. From my side, I can't care other what Twitter does.
Trump on the other side, is not a private person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Wednesday May 27 2020, @06:58PM (1 child)
Why should Twitter be treated as a service provider and get the immunity of the CDA, when it is acting as a publisher? If it wants to be a publisher, that's cool, it should not get the same immunity however that mere service providers do.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 27 2020, @07:34PM
IANAL.
And neither are you. Whatever we state are opinions, not necessarily related with the reality, so it may very well happen that your premise of "is acting as a publisher" is wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tokolosh on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:16PM (4 children)
"The policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science". -- Mao Zedong
(Score: 3, Touché) by Aegis on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:40PM (1 child)
Better prohibit Twitter from publishing fact checks, then ,eh? Gotta trim those flowers to protect Trump.
(Score: 2) by Tokolosh on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:49PM
I save this part for later. From Wikipedia: "The first part of the phrase is often remembered as "let a hundred flowers bloom". It is used to refer to an orchestrated campaign to flush out dissidents by encouraging them to show themselves as critical of the regime, and then subsequently imprison them."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @03:04PM (1 child)
You misunderstand, the blooming flowers were on the graves of those who died thanks to famine, forced labor camps and death quotas.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @07:20PM
You forgot death panels, and facemasks.
(Score: 2) by Aegis on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:18PM (3 children)
He loved free speech, but only for Hitler.
Hitler says something: Free Speech!i
Someone say's "that's a lie." Gas Chamber!
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:00PM (2 children)
Free Speech but ONLY for Nazis....
Want to go protest as a Nazi, Free Speech!
Want to go protest against Nazis: You're a communist bitch [soylentnews.org] who deserved to die. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @06:37PM (1 child)
that stupid, fat bolshevik bitch died of a heart attack and the driver of the car was just trying to get away from people who were attacking his car with deadly objects and most of you motherfuckers know it and would rather put an innocent person in jail b/c you don't like his politics and you want to use the lie in your propaganda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @07:06PM
If so, why did he not defend himself in court?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:11PM (1 child)
While back Trump was sued for blocking people on twitter. The judge decided that twitter was a public forum, and Trump could not block access to his tweets based on first amendment grounds.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Aegis on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:22PM
The executive branch is not allowed to silence people.
Twitter did not block the President's tweet, though, so not sure how the comparison is valid.
Twitter simply exercised their own free speech to call something a lie.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @01:13PM (10 children)
The obvious solution is to nationalize Twitter. Twitter won't be a private entity anymore. Your precious private entity loophole won't save you.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:34PM (1 child)
Good luck with that.
One wonders... if Twitter is such an essential piece for the public, why the govt didn't invent/setup a "Twitter service"? Isn't that dereliction of duty? (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2020, @12:46AM
If he were to set up a Mastodon [joinmastodon.org] instance he would probably be blocked by the rest of the federating servers and the apps.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @03:25PM (1 child)
How are consercatives so dumb and hypocritical? Seriously, you've lost all personal values and replaced it with the worship of false idols. Double points for much Trump loves gold.
This shit is almost enough to make me belive in the supernatural, Trump being an actual demon would make more sense than millions of people suddenly becoming obedient morons with no morals.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 27 2020, @04:05PM
They never had any personal values to begin with, it's been lies all along. It's just more obvious now.
The debt has only ever mattered when Democrats are in charge.
States Rights are terrible as soon as CA tries to pass emissions controls.
This is just the inevitable conclusion to their complete divorce from reality.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday May 27 2020, @05:09PM (4 children)
On first glance, the above quoted idea may be perceived as hyperbolic or extreme; but really, Twitter (and Facebook, and Youtube, and several other commercial entities), by virtue of their market penetration, which is extremely thorough, have become de facto public squares.
Regulating and/or denying speech in what essentially amounts to a public square seem (to me, at least) to strongly resemble an effective and highly unfortunate end-run around the actual intent of US constitutional principles.
I have no objection to appending commentary to content that presents misleading information (and commentary to that commentary, and so on as far down the rabbit hole as anyone cares to dig); but editing, and/or regulating, and/or denying the ability to post... that strikes me as a trip well down the wrong road.
I understand that as a commercial entity, they (presently) have no obligation to allow what amounts to free speech; but you know, perhaps they really should be subject to such an obligation.
I'd prefer just seeing the law changed so that censorship and access limitations are both forbidden to commercial entities maintaining forums that present user-generated content, rather than having them nationalized... but the latter is still preferable, in my view, to what is going on now.
WRT earlier comments about moderation here, I tend to agree — moderation should exist and be visible, it's a form of commentary at that level, but I don't think user X's moderation should serve to hide user Y's post from user Z. If you want to block someone from your own view, that seems perfectly fine. But blocking them from someone else's... that really never did strike me as a good idea. It's far too attractive as a punitive enterprise for inappropriate reasons. If moderators were all honest, aboveboard, critical thinkers, and consistent, well, that'd be something else. But that is not the reality at all.
--
Even Chuck Norris stays off my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @05:16PM (1 child)
The phone company is a commercial entity that can't discriminate on a customer's political beliefs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2020, @12:51AM
True but I'll get a restraining order if you keep calling me with your dumb arguments, Richard!
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Wednesday May 27 2020, @06:11PM (1 child)
No, they have not. If a public square is privately-owned, guess what? It's not a fucking public square.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @07:22PM
If it's a private space then the owners set the rules and become liable for the behavior of their guests, including but not limited to Twitter's disgusting "MAPCommunity".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2020, @01:21AM
If Trump is mad a Twitter why doesn't he just go use MySpace?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @02:36PM (3 children)
I'm still waiting for the moment when all those 2nd-amendment zealots start defending the first amendment with equal zeal.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @07:02PM (2 children)
You're behind the times. Those who support the 2A are far more likely to support them all these days. It's Democrats who are doing the picking and choosing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2020, @07:24PM
Go fucking clean your AR! It's filthy! What is all that goo all over it?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @08:06AM
Odd, because many second amendment supporters support the NSA's mass surveillance, the endless wars, the drug war, the TSA, etc. So do many Democrats, but merely supporting the second amendment doesn't make you a libertarian, that's for sure.