Twitter Adding ‘Misinformation’ Restrictions Ahead of Elections

Twitter is rolling out new censorship measures ahead of the presidential election to combat “misinformation.” In the days leading up to and after November 3rd, Twitter will not allow a political candidate to declare victory until official results are in.

According to a statement from Twitter, the new restrictions will also remove tweets “meant to incite interference with the election process or with the implementation of election results, such as through violent action.” This applies to both presidential and congressional elections.

Twitter currently labels tweets they deem misleading about things like Covid-19, election integrity, and what they call “synthetic and manipulated media.” Starting next week, Twitter will add an alert for users who try to share information they consider “misleading.” These alerts will point the user to information Twitter deems “credible.”

Twitter will also add additional warnings and restrictions to “misleading” tweets from US political figures, US-based users with over 100,000 followers, and other users with high-engagement levels. Users will not be able to comment or like these tweets, only quote tweets will be allowed (retweets that allow the user to comment.) Twitter expects these measures will “further reduce the visibility of misleading information.”

This statement from Twitter came a day after Facebook announced similar restrictions. Facebook also said it would add labels to claims of early victory by political candidates and remove calls for people to engage in poll watching that use “militarized language.”