US election: Donald Trump’s claim of poll theft censored

Twitter flagged a tweet from Donald Trump as ‘misleading’ after the President said Democrats were trying to steal the election.

US President Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

Twitter flagged a social media post from US Donald Trump as “misleading” and covered it with a warning, after the President ­accused the Democrats of trying to steal the election.

“We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election,” Mr Trump wrote from inside the White House, without providing evidence. “We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!”

In the minutes following the post, Twitter hid it under a warning — describing it as ­misleading — citing its “civic ­integrity policy”, though the tweet was still online at the time of publication.

“We placed a warning on a tweet from @realDonaldTrump for making a potentially misleading claim about an election,” the company said.

The company also disabled the sharing and “liking” of Mr Trump’s post, limiting its reach.

Facebook took a different ­approach to Mr Trump’s post on Wednesday, adding a label ­reminding users that election night results and final results may differ as more ballots are counted.

Mr Trump’s tweet which has been Twitter hid, describing it as misleading.

It still let its users share and comment on the post, however.

Facebook’s label said that “no winner of the presidential election had been projected”.

Social media companies ­including Facebook and Twitter have faced increasing pressure to fight misinformation on their platforms ahead of the vote.

Twitter had said before the election that if any candidate called the race early, it would place warning labels such as ­“official sources called this election differently”, or “official sources may not have called the race when this was tweeted”.

The result of the election could take days or weeks to play out, leading to increased responsibility for technology companies and how they treat premature declarations of victory.

Mr Trump has repeatedly taken aim at the large technology companies, calling Twitter at an election eve event in North Carolina “phony guys who fix the elections”.

Twitter has also faced the ire of Republicans after freezing the New York Post’s account over the newspaper’s reports which alleged Joe Biden was involved in corrupt business dealings with his son, Hunter Biden.

Senate Republicans last week grilled Twitter and Facebook executives on platform moderation, accusing them of bias.

But Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey denied the platform’s enforcement decisions favour Democrats.

Twitter began labelling some of Mr Trump’s posts misleading in May. He responded with an order designed to strip legal protections from social media companies.