Twitter will moderate some tweets questioning the presidential election ballot, but leave others out. A warning label will still be displayed.
Twitter is walking a tightrope. In just over three weeks, the first round of the French presidential election will take place and the social network has seen this clearly with previous elections, particularly in the United States: its service is the receptacle for all possible disputes at each major election event. There’s no reason for 2022 to escape.
The question therefore arose as to what attitude the community site was going to adopt: not to moderate anything that is said about the 2022 presidential election, at the risk of letting misinformation spread? Intervene heavily at the level of tweets, which would expose him to accusations of censorship and bias? Rely on justice, despite its slowness?
What strategy for Twitter for the 2022 presidential election?
According to BFM TV, it is a middle way that Twitter will try to take during the presidential election. The site detailed to AFP its battle plan, supposed to both spare political activism and freedom of expression, and to contain any attempt at intoxication and electoral manipulation, whether it comes from France or Europe. foreigner.
In the case of ” tweets that contain false or misleading information about how to participate in elections “, the social network intends to be intransigent, since it is a question of deleting them as soon as it becomes aware of them. Penalties against offending accounts could also fall in the event of multiple violations.
As far as disputes are concerned, Twitter has chosen a less radical option: tweets “ undermining confidence in the election or its results will be able to remain online, but they will be both less visible on the social network (we guess that a search to find them will be less easy and they will not appear in the trends) and will be marked with a warning.
These warnings take the form of a label – the social network has already been using it for several months, in particular as part of its policy to combat misinformation on the coronavirus epidemic. These banners aim to warn other Internet users and provide context based on partnerships with press (fact checing) and official sources.
So much for the theory. In practice, the next few weeks promise to be eventful for the social network, because if the deletion of the most grotesque and disconnected messages from reality will hardly be called into question, the disappearance of other tweets risks generating protest — ditto for those who will be given a warning label.
The issue of disinformation on social networks has been raised for several years – in 2019, for example, the European Commission called on internet giants to do more against fake news. In the case of Twitter, various actions have been implemented or announced, such as Birdwatch. It remains to be seen whether they will work for the presidential election.
