Controversial tweets from Donald Trump seems to be seen as more of normality than anything else. The president’s twitter handle has been known to produce highly fiery and blunt tweets.
One of the many controversial tweets was one that supposedly mocked the fight against climate change, the tweet from his handle read: “It’s freezing and snowing in New York – we need global warming!”.
So when on the 26th of May, at exactly 8:17 am, Trump tweet suggested that that mail-in ballots couldn’t be trusted and that the election would be rigged if the mail-in-ballot method was used, it felt like a classical Donald Trump tweet.
Hence, when the next day Twitter labelled the tweet for fact-checking, it was a really surprising move, and obviously a very bold one at that.
The president’s office hasn’t taken it lightly with Twitter after the social media platform made such a move, there has been talking of a review of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a major law that regulates the activities of the Internet.
One of Twitter’s employee, Yoel Roth, has mostly been at the receiving end of Donald Trump’s wrath on the Popular Social Media company.
Twitter recently started fact-checking tweets related to the COVID-19 so as to curb the spread of false information regarding the novel virus, although the software giants clearly stated that it will also introduce labels to give contexts to tweets that may have unverified claims or rumours, no one saw it being used on the president of the USA.
The reason for the fact-check label on Trump’s tweet seems more related to earlier endeavours introduced before the 2018 elections as part of the company's civic integrity policy geared towards regulating tweets that can influence people’s involvement in Democratic exercises like voting, still, fact-checking Trump’s tweet was nothing short of bold.
Hence, the recommendation was taken to the Head’s of the company’s trust and safety team and general counsel respectively.
Due to certain events, these two had to make the next decision on whether the recommendation for the Tweet to be labelled should get to the CEO.
It was a big decision for them as the decision would normally have been made by Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s global lead for legal, policy, and trust and safety.
After review, these two- Del Harvey and Sean Edgett – decided that the tweet was deemed fit for further review by Jack.
They gave the go-ahead, and only after that did they involve Borrman, Twitter’s VP of global public policy and Monique Meche, the Company’s foremost representative to the US government
So there was it, on the 26th Of May 2020, a recommendation to label a tweet by the President of the world’s most powerful nation for a fact-check, laid before Jack Dorsey and his executive team.
They gave the go-ahead, and by exactly 4:30 p.m. ET, Twitter labelled Donald Trump’s tweet. Signified with an orange exclamation mark in a circle, the following comment followed: “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.”, the comment is very identical to the message the social media platform has been using to flag tweets that may carry wrong information regarding the Corona Virus pandemic.
As expected, Twitter has received several threats from the White House, which includes Trump saying that he would issue an executive order to lawmakers to assess and review the Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a policy that gives internet platforms the freedom to regulate user’s content on their platforms.
However, the more serious consequence that Twitter did not expect has been the “scape-goating” of one of Twitter’s employee, Yoel Roth.
In such a short time span, Yoel Roth’s picture has already appeared on the front page of the New York Post and was specifically mentioned on Fox News by one of Trump’s assistants.
Roth has obviously been targeted by Trump which is evident when the president mentioned him in his recent tweets.
However, judging the supposed “scape-goating” of Yoel Roth by Donald Trump is not as straightforward as one might think.
A New York Post reporter revealed tweets by Roth from many years ago which portrays the twitter employee as a trump hater, in these tweets Roth seems to attack Trump voters and his administration.
The main reason why Roth’s supposed hate for Trump becomes important in analysing all of these is that according to various representations of the social media company, whenever a tweet is identified for possibly violating the civic policy, Roth is among the team that first reviews it.
Although Roth is not among the top management team, his involvement in the reviewing process of Trump’s tweet questions the validity and authenticity of the entire process, this is why although not widely justifiable, Donald Trump's treatment of the twitter employee might be understandable.
So as Trump has promised to take action against social media companies, it is expected that critics began to speak against Jack and Twitter’s action against the President.
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg was quick to highlight the stance of his company in a recent interview, the Facebook billionaire was quick to point out that Facebook will not take any action against similar statements from Donald Trump with respect to mail-in ballots and was quick to subtly criticize twitter for assuming the role of an arbiter of truth.
In fact, the bulk of criticism labelled at Twitter for its recent actions has been that the company cannot act as an arbiter of truth.
A few suggestions have been made for the social media giants to outsource such reviews while others have even suggested more technological innovation like creating an open-source algorithm that carries out the whole process for all social media platforms, one thing that is certain is that the highly valued platform has raised many issues that can affect regulations and policies for social media platforms, especially with respect to monitoring and evaluating contents.
Twitter’s CEO Jack has tried to respond to critics in recent tweets and has insisted that he is taking full responsibility for the decision to label the president’s tweet. Jack has also called on people to leave his employees out of the picture, as Yoel Roth has become a subject of public discussion.
For more than two years, the Tech company has allowed, the president to tweet as he liked, until now. Some commend the stance of twitter as a private company, even if recent threats from Trump to issue an executive order that would ban federal spending on social media platforms and also encourage state attorneys general to launch investigations against them, all suggest that the company is still answerable to the US government.
However, all of these forces us to ask a very big question as to "who has the power in an ever-increasing digital world?"
Platforms like Twitter that serve as a point of connection of information wield so much power to the extent that the choice to or not to regulate the tweet of the US president can affect the political dynamics.
Hence, the president actions to limit the power of the likes of Facebook and twitter with respect to content regulation might be a sudden realization of how powerful these platforms are and with the pace of technology, how powerful they can still become.
As it stands, Twitter is the one facing the wrath of the White House, however, the effect of this significant period might actually be felt on the entire the Tech industry.
Trump’s tweet suggests that the mail-in-ballot system should not be trusted by Americans as the country anticipates the presidential election by November. The need for a mail-in-ballot system arises as the USA continues to battle the effect of the novel coronavirus on large gatherings.
According to senior personnel at the company, Brandon Borrman, the tweet was not identified to be fact-checked by any of Twitter’s employees, Borrman says that one of the intermediary non-profits that have partnerships with Twitter on issues of elections integrity, actually suggested that the tweet might actually be in violation of Twitter’s “Civic integrity” policy.
However, fact-checking the President’s tweet wasn’t a straight forward decision by Twitter.
According to information from senior sources from Twitter and Brandon Borman who happens to be Twitter’s vice president of global communications, the process involved was well thought out and the decision was not a hasty one.
The company knew that such an action would definitely trigger a response from Trump’s office, so the decision was a top management decision and even required the consent and approval of CEO Jack Dorsey.
Actually, if Trump’s tweet had violated Twitter’s policy against messages that directly influence an election, the protocol was to delete it, one can only imagine the response that would have gotten from the White house.
So, according to an internal team that reviews cases like this, Trump’s tweet did not actually violate the policy. However, the issue was now whether to allow the tweet to remain without any action taken.
Twitter had already introduced the labels for fact-checking tweets as explained already, hence the internal review team looked into the president’s tweet again, but this time the decision to be made was whether to recommend it to be labelled for ”fact-checking” and considering the effect of such a decision, it would have to get the approval from the highest authorities in the organization.
https://onezero.medium.com/inside-twitters-decision-to-fact-check-a-trump-tweet-b5a30eaa3b1d