Twitter Labeled 300,000 Election Tweets Including 50 Trump Posts As 'Potentially Misleading'

Twitter Inc TWTR shared statistics of the election weeks in a blog post on Thursday. In the two weeks from Oct. 27 to Nov. 11, the micro-blogging website flagged roughly 300,000 tweets with a ‘disputed and potentially misleading’ label, representing approximately 0.2% of all U.S. election-related tweets.

What Happened: 456 of the labeled tweets were restricted, preventing them from being shared or getting likes or replies.

Many tweets were labeled within minutes of their posting, and roughly 74% of the people who saw the labeled tweets viewed them after the label was added. 

Twitter flagged many tweets from President Donald Trump with the ‘disputed’ labels. A New York Times tally says that 51 of Trump’s tweets, or 34%, were flagged during the two weeks.

The Jack-Dorsey-led company claims that it saw a roughly 29% decrease in ‘Quote tweets’ of the labeled Tweets due to a prompt that warned them of sharing.

Why It Matters: Twitter continues to flag Trump’s tweets alleging voter fraud without providing any evidence. Trump and many Republicans have criticized the company for silencing conservative voices. 

Twitter executives have said that they act without political bias. CEO Jack Dorsey is scheduled to testify Nov. 17 before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the company’s decision in October to block New York Post articles based on documents obtained from the laptop of Hunter Biden, Wall Street Journal reports.

Price Action: TWTR shares fell by 1.99% to $42.81 on Thursday.

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