Nearly 100 Tweets From Trump Were Marked As "false News" by Twitter

Since the 2016 US election, social media platforms have been criticized for misleading voters with false information. In recent years, Twitter has invested heavily in eliminating false information and recently shared its achievements this year.

There may be no other Internet company in the world that is as domineering as Twitter and so ruthless to its own national leaders. Especially this big V, who is not only the current president, but also the sixth in the Twitter fan rankings.

So far, nearly 100 of Trump’s tweets or retweets have been labeled “false news” by Twitter.

300,000 tweets were flagged as false before and after the election

Trump, who has always "governed the country through Twitter", posts dozens of tweets every day, and each one will cause a public opinion storm.

Especially from the early stages of the election to his recent defeat, Trump's tweets became increasingly exaggerated, which finally led to frequent intervention from Twitter.

There are two main types of labels that Twitter uses for Trump’s tweets: "Claims of election fraud are disputed", and another category is "Multiple sources have different views from those in tweets".

In addition to Trump, other tweets suspected of false information were not spared.

Two weeks before and after election day.Twitter has labeled 300,000 tweets related to the presidential election as "potentially misleading," which accounts for 0.2% of all election-related tweets.

According to Twitter, when a tweet is officially marked as "false news", many users will give up forwarding it.

Vijaya Gadde, Head of Legal and Security at Twitter, said: Of the 300,000 flagged tweets, 456 were given stronger warnings (directly blocking the content), and other users were also unable to retweet, reply or like them.

In order to avoid misleading information, Twitter sent a reminder to all American users before the election.For example, reminding users that election results may be delayed, voting by mail is safe and legal, etc..According to statistics, these tips have been viewed 389 million times.

The above actions are just part of Twitter’s strategy to deal with false and misleading news.

With bigwigs in charge and in-depth operations, public opinion management is not slack

There are hundreds of millions of users on Twitter, and hundreds of millions of tweets are generated every day. How much false information will influence the direction of public opinion?

According to a report from a US polling agency,More than 30 percent of voters under 40 believe that social media has influenced their political views.It can be seen that the political power of social media cannot be underestimated.

Political ads are banned during elections 

Unlike Facebook, which has seen a surge in revenue from campaign advertising, Twitter announced late last year that it would completely ban political advertising before the 2020 election, arguing that the influence of political information "should be earned through ability, not bought with money."

Hiring Fei-Fei Li 

Twitter, which was so busy refuting rumors, even invited AI goddess Fei-Fei Li to come out. Almost at the same time, Twitter also published a blog post titled "Update on the way to deal with misleading news." Therefore, from the information disclosed at the time, it can be guessed that this move was also to hope that Fei-Fei Li, who has always focused on using technology to benefit society, could use AI to deal with fake news on Twitter.

Added a special section for the US election 

Twitter has added a "US Election" section to its page to help users filter authoritative polls, voting, and candidate news and tweets.

  Algorithm + manual double review 

Twitter published a blog post titled "Steps We're Taking Ahead of the 2020 US Election", detailing the many ways the platform is taking to combat false information and expressing its determination to eliminate false information. In the process of screening false information, Twitter uses a two-pronged approach of computer algorithms and manual reviewers, hoping to eliminate false propaganda more accurately.

AI and human reviewers will remove tweets that incite others to interfere with voters and polling places, as well as tweets that use intimidation to prevent voters from voting.

In addition, Twitter also stated that any candidate who prematurely declares victory before the final results of the election are determined will be labeled.

People: Twitter is a democratic country, targeting Republicans

Twitter has worked so hard to deal with fake news and an exaggerated president, but it is still unpopular.

A report shows that 73% of Americans believe that social platforms will be more strict on Republican-leaning political views, and 69% of people believe that big technology companies are more biased towards the Democratic Party.

There is constant controversy over which side technology companies sit on, and many users who are used to freedom have complained about the monopolistic intervention of Twitter and Facebook.

Taking this opportunity, some small platforms that were once unknown began to emerge.For example, Parler, which has always claimed that it "does not make algorithmic recommendations" and "does not delete posts or limit traffic", saw a surge in downloads by millions at the beginning of this month., and gained a lot of users.

Today, the election has not yet come to a final conclusion. Technology and globalization have made the public opinion environment unprecedentedly complex. Will the invisible hands behind the scenes lead us to true transparency and objectivity?

News Source:

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-11-twitter-flagged-election-tweets.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/16/conservative-free-speech-app-parler-sees-us-election-surge

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