Twitter labels Trump tweets with fact-checking warning

Twitter has flagged tweets from US president Donald Trump with a fact-check warning.

The social media site added a warning phrase to two of Mr Trump’s tweets in which he called postal voting ‘fraudulent’ and predicted that ‘mail boxes will be robbed’.

Under the tweets, there is now a link reading ‘Get the facts about mail-in ballots’ that guides users to a Twitter Moments page with fact checks and news stories about Mr Trump’s unsubstantiated claims.

Until now, the US president has overcome Twitter’s half-hearted attempts to enforce rules intended to promote civility and ‘healthy’ conversation on its most prominent user.

Mr Trump frequently amplifies misinformation, spreads abuse and uses his feed to personally attack private citizens and public figures alike – all forbidden under Twitter’s official rules.

In a statement, Twitter said Mr Trump’s vote-by-mail tweets ‘contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labelled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots’.

Meanwhile, the husband of a woman who died in Joe Scarborough’s office two decades ago has demanded Twitter remove Donald Trump’s tweets suggesting the former Republican congressman murdered her.

Twitter issued a statement expressing its regret to the husband but so far has taken no action on those tweets.

Meanwhile, President Trump has reacted furiously to the fact-checking warnings and lashed out at Twitter for stifling free speech.

He said the micro-blogging service was ‘completely stifling free speech, and I, as president, will not allow it to happen.’

In a follow up tweet he said the company was interfering with the forthcoming election, slated for November 2020.

‘Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election,’ he tweeted. ‘They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post.’