Twitter says it’s adding special labels to tweets from some U.S. political candidates ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
Twitter says the move is to provide users with “authentic information” and prevent spoofed and fake accounts from fooling users. The labels will include what office a person is running for and where. The labels will appear on retweets as well as tweets off of Twitter, such as when they are embedded in a news story.
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Twitter, along with Facebook and other social media companies, has been under heavy scrutiny for allowing their platforms to be misused by malicious actors trying to influence elections around the world.
"You'll start seeing Labels appear on applicable candidates' Twitter accounts once the candidate has qualified for the general election ballot. This will happen on a rolling basis as states have different caucus and election dates, with the first occurring on March 3," said the company
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Twitter has announced to bring back its “Election Labels” feature for the 2020 US presidential election that received overwhelmingly positive feedback from voters and candidates and played a prominent role in election conversation in the 2018 US midterm election.
In the week before election day, people on Twitter saw Labeled accounts approximately 100 million times each day, and 13 per cent of US election conversation on Twitter included a Tweet with an ‘Election Label’.
“With just under a year until US Election Day and two months until the first votes are cast in the Iowa caucus, we’re launching two initiatives that will help people find original sources of information on Twitter by clearly identifying political candidates,” Twitter said in a statement on Thursday.
“First, we’re bringing back Election Labels, which we first launched during the 2018 US midterm election.
“Second, starting this week, we’ll start identifying candidates who qualify for the primary ballot for US House, US Senate, and Gubernatorial races with a verified badge,” the micro-blogging platform added.
Twitter is a social media app that encourages short tweets and brief conversations. Pixabay
For both primary candidate verification and Election Labels, Twitter is partnering with civic non-profit organization Ballotpedia to utilize their expertise in identifying the official campaign Twitter accounts of candidates.
Election Labels provide information about political candidates, like the office they are running for, their state and district number, and contain a small ballot box icon.
The Label will appear on the profile page of a candidate’s Twitter account and on every Tweet sent and retweeted by the candidate’s account, even when embedded on sites off of Twitter.
Labels will appear on the Twitter accounts of candidates running for the House of Representatives, Senate, or Governor in the 2020 election who have qualified for the general election ballot.
“You’ll start seeing Labels appear on applicable candidates’ Twitter accounts once the candidate has qualified for the general election ballot. This will happen on a rolling basis as states have different caucus and election dates, with the first occurring on March 3,” said the company. (IANS)
