By Deepa Seetharaman
Twitter Inc.'s move to label two tweets by President Trump as
misinformation highlights a widening divide among big tech
platforms on how they handle political speech, an increasingly
contentious issue as the U.S. presidential election approaches.
The messaging platform's decision to slap a fact-checking label
Tuesday on the two tweets, in which Mr. Trump said vote-by-mail
would lead to rampant fraud, contrasts sharply with the position by
larger rival Facebook Inc., which reviewed the same claim from the
president on its platform and found it complied with its rules.
Both companies for years have been reluctant to restrain speech
by politicians and leaders on their platforms, seeking to avoid
becoming what Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has
described as the "arbiter of truth." While Facebook has emphasized
its commitment to a more hands-off approach stance over the past
year, Twitter dropped political ads altogether last year and now is
taking the unprecedented step of weighing in on the truth of
statements by Mr. Trump, its most powerful and controversial
user.
The perils of the approach were immediately apparent. Mr. Trump
on Wednesday vowed to take "big action" against Twitter for its
move, and his allies criticized a senior Twitter policy executive
for harsh past tweets deriding the president and his followers.
The critics argued that the executive, Yoel Roth, who is the
company's head of site integrity, overseeing Twitter's efforts to
address bots and spam, is an example of left-leaning bias at
Twitter. They cited his past tweets, including one from 2016 in
which he called Mr. Trump a "racist tangerine" and another from
2017 when he compared White House adviser Kellyanne Conway to
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi's minister of propaganda.
Mr. Trump has been considering establishing a panel to review
complaints of anticonservative bias on social media, The Wall
Street Journal has reported.
Speaking on "Fox & Friends" Wednesday morning, Ms. Conway
mentioned Mr. Roth by name and recited his Twitter handle on air.
"Somebody in San Francisco go wake him up and tell him he's about
to get more followers."
A Twitter spokeswoman said the company supported Mr. Roth and
didn't plan to suspend or fire him. "No one person at Twitter is
responsible for our policies or enforcement actions," said Vijaya
Gadde, Twitter's top policy official, tweeted. "We are a team with
different points of view and we stand behind our people and our
decisions to protect the health of the public conversation on our
platform."
Mr. Roth didn't immediately respond to a request for
comment.
Mr. Trump planned to sign an executive order Thursday related to
social media, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told
reporters on the flight Wednesday to Washington from Florida, where
Mr. Trump traveled to witness a space launch that was subsequently
called off. She didn't provide further details.
Democrats and other critics of Mr. Trump generally approved
Twitter's decision to label the tweets, but said Twitter and
Facebook alike had to take a tougher stance on his posts that they
say go against the platforms' rules on misinformation and
abuse.
"Effective technology regulation cannot be conducted on the
emotional whims of a single leader," Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.)
said on Twitter. "This disagreement is exactly why we need
thoughtful policies to consistently limit misinformation, instead
of ad hoc fact checks whenever the headlines push Twitter hard
enough."
The controversy and opprobrium from all sides is one reason why
platforms previously have avoided taking stands on speech by Mr.
Trump and other officials and prominent politicians.
"None of them want to make these calls on world leaders or
anybody in political power," said Bridget Barrett, who researches
tech companies' policies at the Center for Information, Technology
and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"A kind reading of that is it's based on freedom of speech. To give
a less kind reading of that, they want to stay friends with the
folks who are regulating them."
The tweets targeted by Twitter, which Mr. Trump posted early
Tuesday, read "There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In-Ballots will be
anything less than substantially fraudulent," and, later, "This
will be a Rigged Election."
Hours later, Twitter attached a small label to the tweets saying
"Get the facts about mail-in ballots," and a link to more
information. That information said fact-checkers say there is no
evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud and all
states offer some form of mail-in absentee voting.
Mr. Trump cross-posted the same claims to Facebook, which has
said it doesn't fact-check speech by politicians. Where it can,
Facebook relies on third-party fact-checkers to determine whether
claims posted on the site are accurate. The company recently
created an independent oversight board that will have a chance to
review and possibly overturn the company's decisions.
There are exceptions to Facebook's rules. If a politician posts
something that violates Facebook's rules around voter or census
interference, the company will remove it, the spokesman said. In
this week's case, Mr. Trump's posts didn't violate those
guidelines, the spokesman added.
"We believe that people should be able to have a robust debate
about the electoral process, which is why we have crafted our
policies to focus on misrepresentations that would interfere with
the vote," a Facebook spokesman said Wednesday.
Ms. Barrett said the post appeared to her to violate two of
Facebook's rules around voter interference, which bar posts that
misrepresent methods for voting and whether a vote will be counted,
among other things.
The Facebook spokesman declined to comment on that view.
Ms. Barrett said that the platforms were in an inherently
difficult position. "It shouldn't fall on Facebook to protect
Democracy and it shouldn't fall on Twitter to protect vote-by-mail
laws," she said. "That's a deeply political failing that they're
caught in the middle of."
Mr. Trump said Twitter's move reflected bias at the tech
platforms. "Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally
silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close
them down, before we can ever allow this to happen," he tweeted
Wednesday. "Clean up your act, NOW!!!!"
The president didn't specify how he might seek to take action.
He has repeatedly threatened consequences for social-media
companies that he has accused of discriminating against
conservatives without following through, and experts say there is
little the president can do to change the way social-media
companies operate.
Earlier this month, he tweeted that the "Radical Left" was in
"total command & control" of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and
Google and said the administration was "working to remedy this
illegal situation." Days later, the Journal reported that Mr. Trump
was thinking about the panel to review complaints of
anticonservative bias on social media.
The vote-by-mail episode came in the midst of debate over a
separate set of tweets from the president suggesting that former
lawmaker and current MSNBC host Joe Scarborough had played a role
in the 2001 death of a congressional aide. The widower of the aide
publicly requested that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey take down the
tweets, saying Mr. Trump was using his wife's memory for "perceived
political gain." Twitter later said it wouldn't take action on the
posts related to Mr. Scarborough.
Wednesday, at a Twitter shareholder meeting, executives were
twice asked about their handling of the tweets. Mr. Dorsey said
Twitter was trying to incentivize healthy debate on the platform,
but the company wanted to give people a chance to respond to
politicians.
"We also believe that it's important that people have
conversations around what's happening, especially with our global
leaders that they can push back, that they can speak truth to power
that they can share and show why this particular behavior is not
right, not just," Mr. Dorsey said.
--Rebecca Ballhaus and Kristina Peterson contributed to this
article.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 27, 2020 19:38 ET (23:38 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Twitter (NYSE:TWTR)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2024 to May 2024
Twitter (NYSE:TWTR)
Historical Stock Chart
From May 2023 to May 2024