Social-Media
Twitter temporarily blocks Trump's challenged election tweets.
It seemed like Twitter applied more limitations on President Trump's Twitter handle on Saturday, when some people found the option to like, retweet or respond to his tweets with "disputed" labels wasn't functioning. Copying the URL to one of the tweets at issue also seemed to be blocked, and quote-tweets did not appear in the search results.
Any people were able to view and like Trump's tweets—a number of Verge employees reported that they could connect with "disputed" tweets by tapping on the alert label—but others on Twitter could not.
omg @jack please tell me you’ve disabled his likes and stats pic.twitter.com/qQMNMgXhTc
— Ryan D Pants (@sixfoot6) December 12, 2020
A Twitter representative said in a Saturday e-mail to The Verge that the site inadvertently took action to limit commitments on Trump's tweet and has since reversed the action. Tweets that breach Twitter's Civic Honesty Policies will continue to be labeled in order to give more context to anyone who might see the Tweet, the spokesperson added.
Twitter started to add "disputed" and other warning labels to tweets featuring election misinformation before the US presidential election on 3 November and to limit its contact with those tweets. It announced that Tweets with early claims of victory will be branded, tweets meant to encourage violence in the election or election outcome will be deleted, and tweets from political leaders of more than 100,000 followers—including President Trump—who are considered "misleading" will be more difficult to reach.
Since the presidential campaign was called for by Joe Biden, President Trump tweeted several falsehoods about the result, stabbed conspiracy theories that it was "rigged" and suggested that there was systemic manipulation, without citing facts. On Saturday, he tweeted, I WON THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE, but mind, I just think in terms of legitimate ballots, not all the bogus voters and bribery that miraculously floated everywhere! God, what a disgrace!
On Friday, the Supreme Court denied an appeal by the Texas Attorney General to reverse the election results in four main states, the most recent failed effort by the President and his team to try to change the election results in court.
