Twitter reinstated its rules governing election disinformation as the social media site prepares for this year’s midterms, the company said Thursday.
The San Francisco-based tech giant said it will implement its “policy of civic integrity” in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, in which all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives and a third of the Senate are up for grabs. will be available.
The stated goal of the policy, which was first introduced in 2018, is to “raise trusted information” and “help keep you safe on Twitter.”
“The mission of our civic integrity work is to protect the conversation on Twitter during elections or other civic processes.” according to Twitter.
Twitter will offer users “prebunks” — or prompts on the home screen that help guide people to the correct information. It will also apply labels to tweets it deems to be misleading.
Social media sites including Twitter, Facebook and others came under fire during the 2016 presidential campaign for cracking down on fraudulent claims.
But efforts to increase content moderation have also led to accusations from conservatives that liberal-leaning tech companies are biased toward Democrats.
Twitter, Facebook and other tech sites banned then-President Donald Trump from their platforms after his supporters ransacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Twitter also admitted it was wrong to censor a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks leading up to the November 2020 election.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter earlier this year for $44 billion, with the goal of changing its content moderation policy to allow for greater freedom of expression.
Musk, who has vowed to restore Trump’s account, tried to back out of the purchase, prompting Twitter to file a lawsuit against him in hopes of enforcing the merger agreement.
Twitter said Thursday that the reinstated policy is an expression of its commitment to “protecting the integrity of the election conversation.”
The company said it evaluates “external data and internal country-based metrics” to “assess the potential for harm online or offline,” as well as “the potential for false or misleading information about citizen processes and rights concerns of man”.
The site will provide regional hubs for local elections so users can more easily access information about candidates in specific state races.
Earlier this year, Twitter said it tested improved recommendation settings so that tweets deemed to contain misinformation are not promoted through notifications.
“We have applied this intervention to notification recommendations on Twitter and are exploring opportunities for other surfaces on Twitter,” the company wrote.
