Facebook and Twitter are on high alert for candidates prematurely claiming victory on Tuesday, amid fears that the drawn-out vote counting process could inspire efforts to disrupt the final result.
The social media companies said they would apply warning labels to posts or tweets affirming that a presidential nominee has won in individual states or the overall election.
A deluge of postal votes, and rules allowing ballots in some states to be received several days after election day, mean the momentum in tight races could swing from one candidate to another as votes are tallied.
Election officials fear that declaring victory early could disrupt ballot counting in the ensuing days and potentially lead to violence if results change during that time.
If large news organisations, which are traditionally seen as a reliable indicator of vote counts, take longer than usual to call results, it could create a vacuum that is filled by social media.
Donald Trump has reportedly been weighing up plans to declare victory on the night if it looks like he is ahead even if votes are not fully counted. He has insisted that counting postal votes after Tuesday would qualify as fraud.
As we head into Election Day in the US tomorrow, we wanted to share an update on how we’ll be helping people find information about voting or returning their mail ballots, and the steps we’re continuing to take to prevent voter suppression, interference and other abuse.
— Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) November 3, 2020
Facebook and Twitter, which were criticised in 2016’s presidential race for failing to tackle propaganda efforts from Russia, said they would crack down on posts claiming victory before results have been officially declared by state officials or news outlets.
Twitter said it would add a label that hides the original tweet and says it is sharing inaccurate information if an account declares a result.
If a tweet claims a result that is contrary to what official sources say, a further warning will be applied saying that official sources have contradicted it. Users will also be blocked from retweeting messages with the warnings, which will apply to candidates with official accounts, or any account with more than 100,000 followers.
Facebook said it would take similar action on posts declaring victory. On Tuesday it will put alerts at the top of every American user’s news feed with warnings that votes were “still being counted” and said it would apply its policies until Reuters and the National Election Pool called a race.
US Election 2020 – When do the swing states announce their results?
The social network said it had dozens of staff working around the clock in a virtual “war room” . It has also been preparing to take extraordinary measures such as reducing the spread of viral posts if fears emerge that the election could turn violent.
Facebook said it was monitoring signs of violence that could disrupt voting, citing the convoys of Trump supporters that swarmed a Biden campaign bus in Texas at the weekend.
On Tuesday morning, Twitter and Facebook both labelled a post from Mr Trump that predicted “violence in the streets” as a result of a Supreme Court decision that gave election officials in Pennsylvania longer to count votes.
The companies said the President’s post, which claimed the decision would allow “rampant and unchecked cheating” broke rules on sharing misleading information about voting. Officials in the key swing state were not able to start counting postal votes until Tuesday.
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