nonamefortoday
Recognized member
At long last, we are here at the deadline: after endless months, with roughly 100 million early votes cast, Election Day is finally upon us. There is very little we can project with certainty about the outcomes, except this: it's going to be ugly on social media.
The early vote turnout has been massive, but we probably have more than another 50 million votes yet to go on the big day. Polls begin closing at 7pm Eastern time on Tuesday and cascade over the next six hours from there, until when Alaska and Hawaii wrap up at 1am (EST) Wednesday. The combination of high turnout, above-average amounts of mail-in voting, and COVID precautions at polling places means we may wait hours, days, or even weeks beyond that point to learn the final results in many states. As if that weren't enough turmoil, President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to declare himself the victor even if large numbers of votes in key states are not yet counted.
The future being what it is, though, tens of millions of us won't be sitting next to broadcast or cable news—or waiting for the first printing of the morning paper—to find out what happened. We'll be glued to our phones and laptops, scrolling through social media apps. So in the face of rampant disinformation, both foreign and domestic, what are those platforms doing to make sure you can trust what you see?
"People on Twitter, including candidates for office, may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called," Twitter explains. The company added Monday that it will be prioritizing the presidential race as well as "other highly contested races where there may be significant issues with misleading information."
However, false tweets will not be deleted. Eligible tweets will instead have labels appended to them that direct people to Twitter's official US election landing page. A Tweet is considered eligible for a label if the account itself belongs to a candidate or a campaign; if the account is based in the US and has 100,000 or more followers; or if the Tweet itself, regardless of origin, has more than 25,000 likes or retweets.
As to what "authoritatively called" looks like, Twitter said it'll consider it good enough when two out of a list of seven news organizations have made the same call. That list includes the Associated Press, Decision Desk HQ, CNN, Fox News, and all three national broadcast television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). Tweets or retweets citing a call from one of these seven organizations are not subject to labeling, even if a second organization has not yet backed up the call.
The early vote turnout has been massive, but we probably have more than another 50 million votes yet to go on the big day. Polls begin closing at 7pm Eastern time on Tuesday and cascade over the next six hours from there, until when Alaska and Hawaii wrap up at 1am (EST) Wednesday. The combination of high turnout, above-average amounts of mail-in voting, and COVID precautions at polling places means we may wait hours, days, or even weeks beyond that point to learn the final results in many states. As if that weren't enough turmoil, President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to declare himself the victor even if large numbers of votes in key states are not yet counted.
The future being what it is, though, tens of millions of us won't be sitting next to broadcast or cable news—or waiting for the first printing of the morning paper—to find out what happened. We'll be glued to our phones and laptops, scrolling through social media apps. So in the face of rampant disinformation, both foreign and domestic, what are those platforms doing to make sure you can trust what you see?
Twitter
Twitter, the president's go-to platform, has a written policy outlining its post-election plans."People on Twitter, including candidates for office, may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called," Twitter explains. The company added Monday that it will be prioritizing the presidential race as well as "other highly contested races where there may be significant issues with misleading information."
However, false tweets will not be deleted. Eligible tweets will instead have labels appended to them that direct people to Twitter's official US election landing page. A Tweet is considered eligible for a label if the account itself belongs to a candidate or a campaign; if the account is based in the US and has 100,000 or more followers; or if the Tweet itself, regardless of origin, has more than 25,000 likes or retweets.
As to what "authoritatively called" looks like, Twitter said it'll consider it good enough when two out of a list of seven news organizations have made the same call. That list includes the Associated Press, Decision Desk HQ, CNN, Fox News, and all three national broadcast television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC). Tweets or retweets citing a call from one of these seven organizations are not subject to labeling, even if a second organization has not yet backed up the call.
An example of what you might see if you try to retweet a less-than-accurate Tweet about the election on election night.
Another example of what you may see if you try to retweet a misleading victory claim.
Welcome to Admin Junkies