Twitter flags Trump tweets as battle spills to social media

WASHINGTON: Twitter labeled two of President Donald Trump s tweets as misleading Wednesday as a battle over the knife-edge US election spilled into social media.

The latest action came when a tweet from the president claimed ballot irregularities during the vote-counting process.

Trump alleged that there had been “surprise ballot dumps” in states where he had been leading Democrat Joe Biden in the race for the White House.

Twitter’s action made the comments less visible, and users seeking to read the post were required to click through a warning that “some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading.”

A Twitter spokesperson said the action was taken “in line with our Civic Integrity Policy,” and would “significantly restrict engagements” with the tweet.

A similar action was taken against an earlier tweet by the president suggesting the Democratic nominee was seeking to “steal” the election.

The Twitter spokesperson said it took action on a number of other comments including premature victory claims by a North Carolina Republican Senate candidate and one comment contending prematurely that Biden had won Wisconsin.

“As votes are still being counted across the country, our teams continue to take enforcement action on Tweets that prematurely declare victory or contain misleading information about the election broadly,” Twitter said.

Facebook also added disclaimers to messages by Trump as social platforms scrambled to live up to a pledge to root out misinformation about the election.