Twitter flags Trump tweet about mail drop boxes for violating election rules
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Twitter flagged a tweet by President Trump on Sunday that claimed, without evidence, that mail drop boxes are a "voter security disaster" and are "not Covid sanitized."
Driving the news: "We placed a public interest notice on this Tweet for violating our Civic Integrity Policy for making misleading health claims that could potentially dissuade people from participation in voting," Twitter said in a statement.
- "Per our policies, this Tweet will remain on the service given its relevance to ongoing public conversation. Engagements with the Tweet will be limited. People will be able to Retweet with Comment, but not Like, Reply, or Retweet it."
- Worth noting: The tweet remained on the platform for more than five hours before the label was added.
Between the lines: A bipartisan task force of election officials from across the country recommended that states expand options for returning mail-in ballots by installing secure drop boxes, which is already the norm in several states that conduct vote-by-mail elections.
The big picture: It's not the first time the platform has added labels to Trump's tweets for breaking its rules about election disinformation or other violations. Trump has repeatedly accused Twitter of limiting speech for conservatives.
- Twitter and Facebook both removed a video post from President Trump earlier this month in which he baselessly claimed children are "almost immune" to COVID-19.
- A May tweet in which Trump used the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" in response to civil unrest in Minneapolis was found to have broken Twitter's rules on violence.
