Twitter briefly restricts Trump’s disputed election tweets
It looked like Twitter was adding further restrictions to President Trump’s Twitter account on Saturday, as some users noticed the ability to like, retweet or reply to his tweets with “disputed” labels was not working. Copying the URL to one of the disputed tweets also appeared to be disabled, and quote-tweets were not appearing in search results.
Some users were able to access and like Trump’s tweets — several Verge staffers confirmed they could engage with “disputed” tweets by clicking through the warning label— but others on Twitter could not.
OK Based on my probing, for Trumps election fraud tweets:
– like, RT, reply, copy URL actions are disabled
– all counts disabled
– quote tweets allowed, if you click through warning
– maybe most importantly: QTs undiscoverable. No visible semantic connections. No search. pic.twitter.com/Fh7Xg5O5fg— Ryan D Pants (@sixfoot6) December 12, 2020
A Twitter spokesperson said in an email to The Verge on Saturday that the platform “inadvertently took action to limit engagements,” on Trump’s tweet and had since reversed the action. Tweets that violate Twitter’s Civic Integrity Policy “will continue to be labeled in order to give more context for anyone who might see the Tweet,” the spokesperson said.
Twitter began applying “disputed” and other warning labels to tweets containing election misinformation ahead of the November 3rd US presidential election, and restricting engagement with those tweets. It announced that Tweets with premature claims of victory would be labeled, tweets intended to incite interference in the election or election results could be removed, and tweets from political figures with more than 100,000 followers — which includes President Trump — which receive a “misleading” label will be more difficult to access.
Since the presidential race was called for Joe Biden, President Trump has tweeted numerous falsehoods about the election, stoking conspiracy theories that it was “rigged,” and claiming there was widespread fraud, without citing evidence. On Saturday, he tweeted “I WON THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE, but remember, I only think in terms of legal votes, not all of the fake voters and fraud that miraculously floated in from everywhere! What a disgrace!”
The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request from the attorney general of Texas seeking to overturn election results in four key states, the latest unsuccessful attempt by the president and his team to try to change the election results in court.
It looked like Twitter was adding further restrictions to President Trump’s Twitter account on Saturday, as some users noticed the ability to like, retweet or reply to his tweets with “disputed” labels was not working. Copying the URL to one of the disputed tweets also appeared to be disabled, and…
