Donald Trump & Joe Biden Warned By Twitter Not To Declare Election Victory Before “It Is Authoritatively Called”

Dominic Patten
·2 min read
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Chris Wallace wasn’t able to do it in the first and maybe only Presidential debate, but Twitter is now trying to reign Donald Trump in for election night and perhaps beyond.

“We do not allow anyone to use Twitter to manipulate or interfere in elections or other civic processes, and recently expanded our civic integrity policy to address how we’ll handle misleading information surrounding these events,” the social media platform announced on its blog this morning. “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.”

Even as Joe Biden seems to be pulling far ahead in the polls, there is still anticipation that the results will not be known on November 3 due to COVID-19 safety protocols and mail-in and absentee ballots.

While not ever mentioning the former Celebrity Apprentice host or the former Vice-President directly, Twitter’s statement and new policy is the just the latest move by social media companies to contain phony political information during the bitterly contested campaign. In the case of Twitter, the platform in recent months has been tagging tweets from the poll sagging POTUS “for violating our Civic Integrity Policy.”

In the 25 days before the election, clearly Twitter doesn’t think that tagging is enough.

“People on Twitter, including candidates for office, may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called,” Twitter went on to declare on Friday. “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,” the Jack Dorsey run service. “Tweets which include premature claims will be labeled and direct people to our official US election page.”

In addition, again without mentioning incessant tweeter-in-chief Trump by name, Twitter also instigated new safeguards and delays. In that vein, it plans on discontinuing some current features, starting on October 20 and running until a final election decision is made, it seems.

“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.”

BTW – Trump has 87.2 million followers, Biden has 10.8 million followers.

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