Twitter needs to fact-check these tweets from prominent liberals
Author: Sohrab Ahmari
The views of the Authors are not necessarily the views of Enigmose.
This week, for the first time, Twitter “fact-checked” one of President Trump’s opinions and redirected users to coverage from that paragon of fairness and objectivity, CNN (don’t laugh).
Twitter announced the introduction of the new feature earlier this month. The goal, two workers wrote, is to “make it easy to find credible information” and to stanch the flow of “misleading content.”
But I wonder: Will the platform also append “fact-check” labels and links to tweets from prominent liberals that also turned out to be “misleading” or outright false?
Start with a 2017 tweet from CNN contributor Ana Navarro claiming that an “Ivanka Fund got $100 million pledge from the Saudis and UAE.”
The truth: The cash went to a World Bank initiative for female entrepreneurs. Navarro’s tweet garnered more than 43,000 retweets.
Or how about a 2019 tweet from actress Nancy Lee Grahn that featured photos of migrant children at a border detention center and railed against Team Trump for allegedly torturing kids? As Internet sleuths pointed out, Grahn’s photo was cropped to remove the timestamp: 2015. It garnered nearly 50,000 retweets anyway
Then there was Rachel Maddow’s blog’s 2018 claim that the White House had edited the video of the president’s Helsinki news conference with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin “to remove [a] question about whether [he] wanted Trump to win.” The Washington Post and numerous other outlets debunked the claim, yet the tweet is still up, with 24,000 retweets — and no Twitter warning label.
In January 2019, former President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, joined thousands of other members of the blue-check Twitterati in touting a made-for-Twitter BuzzFeed News exposé. “This is big,” McFaul wrote, “President Trump directed his attorney to lie to Congress.”
Yes, big — and false: Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team was quick to characterize the story as inaccurate, and its report made clear that the president had done no such thing. No Twitter “fact-check” hazard for McFaul, et al., though. Full Story @ NY Post
Here’s One Big Question Twitter Won’t Answer About Its Fact Checks
Author: Peter Hasson
Twitter has not said who writes its fact checks.
The social media company sparked a backlash from President Donald Trump after appending a fact check to one of his tweets about mail-in voting.
Twitter’s fact check, though, misrepresented the facts by conflating all-mail voting with absentee voting, the Wall Street Journal reported. Twitter later updated the language of its fact check.
There was an error in Twitter's fact check of Trump's vote-by-mail tweets, underscoring the challenge social media platforms face trying to arbitrate truth.
— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) May 27, 2020
It was corrected after an elections professional notified the company (and me) about the mistake.https://t.co/bQmfZc8pBm pic.twitter.com/6IoeSzlXpqUnlike other prominent fact-checking operations, Twitter doesn’t display the names of the fact check’s authors.
“We’re adding a label to Tweets that then links to a Moment in order to give people on our service more context around what they’re seeing. This Moment includes a variety of information from various sources,” Twitter spokesman Trenton Kennedy told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an email. Full Article @ Daily Caller
Kayleigh McEnany Highlights Alleged Anti-Conservative Bias From Twitter
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany highlighted on Thursday actions that Twitter has taken against the Trump administration that the administration says proves that the social media company is applying political bias in its content moderation decisions.
The remarks from McEnany come as President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on Thursday that took action against social media companies through a variety of means including seeking to strip them of the legal and liability protections that they receive under Section 230, a law that protects tech giants from being liable for content that users post on their platforms.
Full Story @ Daily Wire.@PressSec Slams Twitter for their repeated bias against Conservatives including allowing Verified users to incite violence against the Covington Catholic students and only giving them a slap on the wrist. pic.twitter.com/Aswn8FBmzr
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) May 28, 2020
Related Articles
It Isn’t Your Imagination: Twitter Treats Conservatives More Harshly Than Liberals - Recently, Mr. Dorsey appeared on two different podcasts, on which he similarly denied any bias against the right. Which contradicts the next article....
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: I 'fully admit' our bias is 'more left-leaning'
Billionaire Republican buys major Twitter stake, may oust CEO amid GOP concerns of bias, reports say
Twitter censors Trump's Minneapolis tweet for 'glorifying violence'
International: Silent protests held at Delhi against Twitter’s left-wing bias and deliberate silencing of opposite ideology
2017: FCC Chair Says Twitter and YouTube's Political Biases Are the Real Threat to an Open Internet
2013: Twitter is a Mainstream Liberal but a Conservative Wonk
Trump vows he’s ‘working to remedy this illegal situation’ of radical left controlling social media platforms
Trump slams ‘radical left’ giants of social media
President Donald Trump blasted the social media giants on Friday including Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter for Left-wing bias, adding that his administration is “working to remedy this illegal situation.
“The Radical Left is in total command & control of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Google,” Trump tweeted. The message came with a tweet featuring video of conservative commentator Michelle Malkin decrying tech censorship. As if to prove Trump’s point, Twitter later removed the video of Malkin from their platform. Read More
YouTube censors epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski for opposing lockdown
‘We could open up again and forget the whole thing’
Big Tech companies are aggressively tamping down on COVID-19 “misinformation” — opinions and ideas contrary to official pronouncements.
Dr. Knut M. Wittkowski, former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University, says YouTube removed a video of him talking about the virus which had racked up more than 1.3 million views.
Governments around the world say they are following ‘The Science’ with their draconian measures to stem the spread of the virus. But the science around Covid-19 is bitterly contested. Many experts have serious doubts about the effectiveness of the measures, and argue that our outsized fears of Covid-19 are not justified. Knut Wittkowski is one such expert who has long argued for a change of course. Read More
