Facebook flags Trump post on mail-in voting
Facebook today placed a so-called voting info disclaimer on US President Donald Trump’s post on mail-in voting, following criticism of the social network’s relaxed approach to regulating the President’s content.
“Mail-In Voting, unless changed by the courts, will lead to the most CORRUPT ELECTION in our Nation’s History! #RIGGEDELECTION,” Trump wrote in the post.
Nearly a quarter of US voters cast their 2016 presidential ballots by post. Routine methods make it very hard to interfere with mailed ballots, experts have said.
The disclaimer by Facebook on the post redirects users to details from a US government website on how to vote in the 2020 elections.
Similar labels have also been placed on posts by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden since the tech firm launched a policy to add information to posts by candidates and elected officials.
It comes a day after the social network’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was forced to deny the presence of a deal with Trump that he be excluded from monitoring of political posts.
Trump’s social media posts are regularly flagged by tech giants such as Twitter as containing misleading or potentially harmful information, but Facebook has taken a light-touch approach to his content.
“I’ve heard this speculation, too, so let me be clear: There’s no deal of any kind,” Zuckerberg told Axios in an interview yesterday. “Actually, the whole idea of a deal is pretty ridiculous.”
Reports of a deal between the pair stemmed from an undisclosed dinner attended by Zuckerberg, Trump and billionaire tech ally Peter Thiel in October last year.
“I accepted the invite for dinner because I was in town and he is the president of the United States,” Zuckerberg said, adding that he had done the same while former US President Barack Obama was in office.
“The fact that I met with a head of state should not be surprising, and does not suggest we have some kind of deal.”
Zuckerberg said last week in an online question and answer session that “giving people some space for discourse” was not the same as agreeing with their beliefs.