With Election Day looming, Twitter imposes new limits on U.S. politicians -- and ordinary users, too
Source: Washington Post
With Election Day looming, Twitter imposes new limits on U.S. politicians — and ordinary users, too
The changes will alter the look and feel of Twitter, increasing the amount of time a user must spend to retweet someone else’s comment
By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg
10/9/2020, 12:24:40 p.m.
Twitter will impose new warnings on politicians’ lies, restrict premature declarations of victory and block calls for polling violence or other disruptions, the company announced Friday as it rolled out wide-ranging changes designed to harden the platform against abuse related to the Nov. 3 U.S. election.
The moves also will temporarily alter the look and feel of Twitter, a service built on instantaneous conversation, quips, and breaking news. Retweeting others, for example, will require an extra step designed to encourage users to add their own thoughts before posting. Recommendations and trends will get new curbs intended to prevent abuse.
Twitter’s moves, like those announced recently by Facebook, are aimed mainly at combating efforts to manipulate the political landscape at critical moments in the hotly contested national vote. The policy changes are the culmination of years of reforms intended to prevent a repeat of 2016?s electoral debacle on social media, when disinformation, false news reports and Russian interference rampaged virtually unchecked across all major platforms.
“Twitter has a critical role to play in protecting the integrity of the election conversation, and we encourage candidates, campaigns, news outlets and voters to use Twitter respectfully and to recognize our collective responsibility to the electorate to guarantee a safe, fair and legitimate democratic process this November,” company officials said in a blog post published at noon Friday. The authors were Vijaya Gadde, the Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead at Twitter, and Kayvon Beykpour, its product lead.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/09/with-election-day-looming-twitter-imposes-new-limits-us-politicians-ordinary-users-too/
