Twitter executives have joined with those at Facebook to institute wide-ranging censorship policies targeting political posts they say “falsely claim a win for any candidate.”
The embattled social media company announced Friday that it would add labels to posts that claim a pre-mature victory for any candidate and remove posts they believe interfere with the election process.
Vijaya Gadde, whose title reads “Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead,” and Kayvon Beykpour, a “Product Lead” for Twitter and co-founder or Periscope, announced the draconian changes on the official Twitter blog:
“People on Twitter, including candidates for office, may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called. 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. Tweets which include premature claims will be labeled and direct people to our official US election page.
“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.”
Holy moly @twitter went full fascist today. This is the day we’ve been warning about that Democrats said we were crazy for warning about. Make no mistake this is election interference from social media to help the Democrats.
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) October 9, 2020
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in September that his company would target what it believes is “misinformation” prior to the November 3, 2020, General Election.
Zuckerberg said his organization was banning all political ads during the 7 day period before the elections, removing claims “the company” believes would lead to voter suppression, and would start labeling posts that they believe falsely claim wins on election night.
Samantha Zager, Deputy National Press Secretary for the Trump Campaign was quick to criticize the move as an action against free speech.
“After months of big tech censorship against President Trump, the unelected liberal coastal elites of Silicon Valley are once again attempting to influence this election in favor of their preferred ticket by silencing the president and his supporters after Election Day,” Zager told reporters.
“This announcement from Twitter proves they…[intend] to control the flow of information when they lose by attempting to wipe the president and his supporters off the Internet while Democrats steal votes,” Zafer added.
Earlier this month, Senate Commerce Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) told reporters that Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg all declined to accept invitations to testify before his committee. Wicker has issued subpoenas for the three to appear to testify.
