Social-Media Platforms Will Discourage Premature Election Victory Claims

[Make7]

By Ed Kilgore

The success of any Red Mirage scenario on Election Night — a potential Trump victory claim based on in-person votes counted first and heavily skewed toward the GOP thanks to Trump’s demonization of voting by mail — depends on a great deal of media complicity. Team Trump would need news outlets to help spread its bogus claims, most obviously. The effort would also require just enough credulity from media figures to keep Trump and his surrogates from being howled down before MAGA folk can take to the streets demanding an end to the counting of “fraudulent” mail ballots.

So it’s very good to hear that two social-media platforms that would be especially important in Trump’s effort to preemptively claim victory are letting it be known that they’ll put up at least a bit of a fight, as Politico reports:

[Twitter’s] rules currently prohibit a narrower set of election-related tweets, including posts that stoke confusion about how to vote and other forms of voter suppression. And the platform in recent months has flagged some tweets by President Donald Trump and his allies that contained misleading information about mail-in voting.

But under its new guidelines, set to take effect next Thursday, Twitter will slap warning labels or take down posts “claiming victory before election results have been certified” or seeking to “prevent a peaceful transfer of power,” the company said in a blog post. And Twitter will take the same action against “disputed claims” about the electoral process, including “unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying, or certification of election results.”

Facebook issued similar warnings last week, as Newsweek reported:


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We’ve got 54 days to get this right, media folk. That’s plenty of time unless you are asleep at the wheel.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/social-media-platforms-to-denounce-premature-victory-claims.html

I hope all the news networks adopt some reasonable guidelines to ensure results are not declared prior to being warranted. Trump believes he won the popular vote in 2016 – this year will be an ideal circumstance for him to plant the seeds of doubt.