Twitter introduces major changes to combat misinformation ahead of US Elections 2020

Ahead of the US Elections 2020, Twitter has introduced massive changes under its Civic Integrity Policy to make Elections free, fair, and safe, and prevent the spread of misinformation that could harm the process. "We do not allow anyone to use Twitter to manipulate or interfere in elections or other civic processes, and recently expanded our civic integrity policy to address how we’ll handle misleading information surrounding these events," said Twitter in an article penned by Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead Vijaya Gadde and Product Lead, Twitter and Co-Founder, Periscope Kayvon Beykpour. 

"Under this policy, we will label Tweets that falsely claim a win for any candidate and will remove Tweets that encourage violence or call for people to interfere with election results or the smooth operation of polling places," said the social-networking site in the statement. 

Under the new guidelines, two major points would be looked into-

• People on Twitter, including candidates for office, may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called

The company in its statement said that the Election results would only be determined after an official 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 labelled and direct people to our official US election page," it said. 

• 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.

Apart from this, Twitter added that tweets that violate its policies against misleading information about "civic integrity, COVID-19, and synthetic and manipulated media," would continue to be labelled by them. Under this, a 'misleading information label' would appear under the tweet asking users to supplement claim with credible information. "In addition to these prompts, we will now add additional warnings and restrictions on Tweets with a misleading information label from US political figures (including candidates and campaign accounts), US-based accounts with more than 100,000 followers or that obtain significant engagement," said the company in the statement. 

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Three other changes would be introduced later by the end of the US Election week -

1. Twitter will encourage people to add their own commentary prior to amplifying content by prompting them to Quote Tweet instead of Retweet.
2. Twitter will prevent “liked by” and “followed by” recommendations from people you don’t follow from showing up in your timeline and won’t send notifications for these Tweets. 
3. Twiter will only surface Trends in the “For You” tab in the United States that include additional context. That means there will be a description Tweet or article that represents or summarizes why that term is trending.

Read the full details of the company's policy changes here.

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Read: Twitter Shuts Down Over 1,500 Accounts Linked To State-sponsored Disinformation Networks