Twitter tags Trump tweet with fact-checking warning

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52815552

by l31g • 6 years ago

162 258 6 years ago

hhs2• 6 years ago

Curious what the process was in designing that warning. How did they A/B test this? How did they experiment with different fonts, colors, and spaces?

nojito• 6 years ago

Looks like they tested it earlier this year.

The demo was a bright orange notice.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-testing-new-w...

hhs2• 6 years ago

This is neat, thanks.

It’s interesting that in the article they write: “A leaked demo features bright red and orange badges for tweets that are deemed "harmfully misleading."”

But currently, they didn’t use that approach. Right now the warning tag is an exclamation point circled badge with blue text.

Barrin922• 6 years ago

If we're honest a lot of his tweets violate twitters content policy and they do so blatantly. I wonder if they'll ever have the guts to straight up hand him at least a temp ban.

seph-reed2• 6 years ago

Why wouldn't you? Life is way too short to pass up on the opportunity to ban a president. The lulz would last centuries.

ipsum2• 6 years ago

Shareholder responsibilities. I would guess that a good chunk of Twitter users are there to read and interact with the president's tweets.

daenz2• 6 years ago

Jack Dorsey has spoken about this on Joe Rogan's podcast, and he basically says that it was a judgement call where they weighed the public interest in the tweets against the violations of the tweets.

EDIT>> I dug up the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K571_jqnCpM

austincheney3• 6 years ago

Did Dorsey clarify what he meant by public interests? That sounds like a vague distraction.

HumblyTossed2• 6 years ago

As part of the public, I would rather my President's tweets not be lies, half truths and flat out nastiness.

jccalhoun• 6 years ago

And by public interest he means the valuation of his company when all the Trump fans revolt and leave twitter.

gkoberger2• 6 years ago

I understand this route. The President of the United States already has a gigantic platform, so it's not like he'll just go away like @nero did. This gives Twitter a chance to annotate his hate with facts, and hopefully reach his audience. Banning him just makes him a martyr, without lessening his reach.

I do wish the UI was a bit... angrier. The friendly light blue doesn't exactly scream "misinformation!"

But as they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Removing him from Twitter won't make him or his base any less hateful. It's a constant reminder that he needs to be removed. I think if Twitter and news organizations just started ignoring him, many people would forget how horrible he is.

acbart• 6 years ago

I disagree, giving certain folks a platform only raises them up and legitimatizes them. Didn't the Reddit folks discover that shutting down hateful subreddits prevents them from popping back up effectively? I believe this is the citation[1].

[1] http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf

Barrin922• 6 years ago

I think arguing based on outcome misses the more fundamental point. The president is a citizen. When Angela Merkel speeds she gets a ticket, and when she goes to the supermarket she stands in the queue (which she actually literally does herself regularly, in contrast to Trump I suppose).

So regardless of whether banning him is good or bad in terms of exposure or whatever, he's a user on the platform and he ought to be treated as such. If Trump wants to speak as the president with authority I assume he has the white house press department at his disposal.

smitty1e• 6 years ago

Trump short-circuits the media gatekeepers using Twitter.

But the relationship is symbiotic. While Trump loves him some free platform, he's a big traffic draw.

So, if Twitter wants to be too uppity, Trump could, for example shift operations to Gab.

I submit that a key point here is THERE IS NO CORRECT ANSWER to the policy question.

If one engages in social media, one's feelings will be hurt.

This is no blank check to be a dick. Criticisms of Trump cheapening the office are trivially shown correct. Vote accordingly this November.

jerkstate2• 6 years ago

It seems like Trump is making a prediction rather than stating a fact, very very strange use of the phrase "fact-checking" by Twitter

baddox3• 6 years ago

Baseless speculation about the integrity of US national elections is a perfectly reasonable thing to fact-check and tag as misleading.

jerkstate2• 6 years ago

I'm glad at least you agree that his tweet is speculation.

slg4• 6 years ago

The move comes on the heels of Twitter's decision not to remove comment President Trump made about the death of Lori Klausutis in 2001. The president has tweeted several messages promoting a conspiracy theory that Ms Klausutis was murdered by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.

I would be very curious to hear an explanation of this decision. Why do Tweets about mail in ballots receive a warning but tweets accusing a journalist of murder don't?

Rebelgecko2• 6 years ago

I don't think he actually accused a journalist of murder. He used CYA language like "the investigation ought to be reopened". The implication is obvious, but I think that keeps him out of libelous territory. Of course Twitter can have more strict standards if they want, but so far they've chosen not to.

root_axis6• 6 years ago

Seems like this policy will be difficult to scale... Who is taking odds on Trump threatening a DOJ investigation before the week is over?

dbbk5• 6 years ago

There is no crime the DOJ can justify investigating...

root_axis6• 6 years ago

Well, it remains to be seen if that actually matters. Let's hope it still does.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/27/after-twitter-fact-check-t...

no_carrier• 6 years ago

I don't follow Trump on Twitter but go and look up his feed regularly by Googling 'donald trump twitter'. I always get there by the first result.

This morning? He doesn't seem to be on the front page at all... the first result is for a search done on twitter.con for 'donald trump twitter', the next result is for the POTUS account. I would say this fact checking thing has had a knock on effect to search results.

runawaybottle• 6 years ago

If Covid second wave happens in November, large scale mail in ballot efforts could lead to the biggest voter turn out in American history.

baddox3• 6 years ago

And if that happens, take note of which political parties/groups fight tooth and nail because they know that voter turn out is bad for them. (It's not difficult to predict.)

umvi4• 6 years ago

Isn't too much voter turnout bad though? Do we really want every poor ignorant impoverished (or rich) American voting? Or just the people that take democracy seriously and vote after having puzzled it out? If you reduce the friction too much (or even force people to vote) you'll get a lot of voting based on who promised the most goodies/handouts or emotional appeal rather than rational reasoning.

zests2• 6 years ago

Political posts aren’t pleasant for anyone. They are also often meaningless.

Watch as I essentially take the contrapositive of your statement and say << Democrats fight hard to make voting as easy as possible because they are supported by people who are not engaged politically and by people who aren’t invested enough to vote if it takes any effort at all. >>

See? Not pleasant. I’d wager a lot of people have problems with that statement and I’d also wager that I could use each of their counter arguments to my statements as counter arguments to yours.

I see this pattern a lot. Its strange to me.

11thEarlOfMar• 6 years ago

How would one actually implement a high integrity fact-checking service?

jamiesonbecker• 6 years ago

Sorry, what's a fact?

asdff• 6 years ago

Interns.

Recurecur• 6 years ago

Here's my vote for the best way:

- Crowd sourced

- If 80%+ agreement it's true or false, report it as such with top sources provided

- If less than 80%, report it as "controversial leaning (strongly)..." with sources provided, inviting actual research

In the US, the question of mail voting encouraging fraudulence would get far less than a 80% consensus.

godelski7• 6 years ago

I think one of the issues with this will be how it is linking the correct information. I like the little inclusion before tweets, but there's no sources on them. Then when you scroll down on the tweets I see them in this order: The Hill, WaPo, CNN, a CBS News reporter, a Fortune Magazine reporter, a Vox reporter, Sr Political Reporter for Huffington, ACLU Nebraska, a CNN political correspondent.

The issue here is that everything here is considered in the hard left of the media. I'm concerned that this will only help grow the divide between Americans, though I also don't have a better alternative to this. Clearly there is a lack of coverage of this from the right and in fact the opposite. A quick DDG search of "fox news mail in ballot" pulls up [0][1][2]. So when you see things like this I think it is easier to say that "the left" is trying to trick you. If Fox is your primary source of news, then it does look like Twitter is trying to silence a real issue. If Fox isn't your primary source of news then it looks like Twitter is trying to fight misinformation. Things are so crazy that it really is hard to find the truth and there is very good reason to believe that someone is lying. And no one wants to admit that someone they've trusted for a long time is lying to them, especially when there's nuggets of truth that you can hold onto.

So I'm a little worried about the repercussions of this, especially since the right already thinks Twitter is supporting the left.

Edit: By hard left I mean from the perspective of Fox viewers. My main point is about the perspective of the people this is specifically aimed at. While on the left we don't see it that way go talk to your friends on the right, they see it differently. My concern is because we need to unify and not divide.

[0] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/voter-fraud-california-man-...

[1] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/south-carolina-election-bal...

[2] https://video.foxnews.com/v/6158607323001#sp=show-clips

trophycase• 6 years ago

None of those news outlets you mentioned are "hard left". They are corporatist status quo. They are all in support of Joe Biden who is hardly "left" at all

godelski7• 6 years ago

> The issue here is that everything here is considered the hard left of the media by Fox viewers.

Maybe the edit here makes the statement clearer because before it was implicit.

dmoy• 6 years ago

Left for American politics at least I guess. "Left" in America is right of center in most other western countries.

It's a relative measure - left compared to Fox. Not left compared to SZ or Haaretz.

sfj9• 6 years ago

He is the opposing candidate of the current president, however. And why should we trust news outlets that are blatantly in favor of one candidate over another, and bury stories that look bad for their favored candidate?

jolux9• 6 years ago

In what sense are CBS, CNN, and the Washington Post hard left?

henriquez2• 6 years ago

I think it’s more fair to characterize them as corporatist and neoconservative/neoliberal. If the mainstream media were actually left-wing they would be propagandizing for Bernie Sanders. Instead they’re propagandizing in favor of old-guard politicians like Mitt Romney and Nancy Pelosi. But no matter how you slice it, it’s still propaganda.

I agree with the parent commenter that this will only backfire, likely causing the opposite of intended effect on undecided voters. Tech companies like Twitter are not in a position to play arbiters on what is factual and what isn’t. And I think it’s really dangerous both for people to expect tech companies to assume this mantle and also to expect them to do a good (or honest) job of it.

godelski7• 6 years ago

In what sense are CBS, CNN, and the Washington Post hard left?
> The issue here is that everything here is considered the hard left of the media by Fox viewers.

Maybe the edit here makes the statement clearer because before it was implicit.

Hankenstein2• 6 years ago

The problem for me, someone who really wants to be in the middle, is that the only conservative leaning news outlet that I believe (no facts in my reporting) does fact based reporting is the Wall Street Journal. If I want news with data and facts I have to go with the "left" leaning papers.

The Washington Examiner and Fox News have been burning their credibility on a daily basis.

travisjungroth• 6 years ago

Why do you want to be in the middle?

ewwhite• 6 years ago

Why do you want to be in "the middle"?

sfj9• 6 years ago

The Washington Examiner and Fox News have been burning their credibility on a daily basis.

Oh really? Name some things they lied about in the last 5 days.

root_axis6• 6 years ago

This problem is turtles all the way down, there is no trusted apolitical arbiter of the facts, you either believe twitter is making a best-effort attempt to curtail misinformation or you believe they're exercising a political agenda under the guise of curtailing misinformation.

godelski7• 6 years ago

The issue here is that the people that already believe in these sources already think the president is lying. On the other hand, people that think the president is telling the truth aren't going to believe those sources. So what does this do? Are there that many people on the fence? Because everyone I know in the middle already thinks this is laughable (Utah votes by mail and every Republican in CA I know votes from home!), those on the left think it is about voter suppression, and those on the right think it is about voter integrity.

While I don't disagree with the program, I'm also not sure what it solves.

sj4nz• 6 years ago

Twitter could possibly fund itself for a long time if they hosted a pay-per-view event of the moment they lock and disable that account for policy violations.

It could be the most profitable 5-minutes of pay-per-view streaming in history and also simultaneously the most amazing test of Internet resiliency, ever.

dbbk5• 6 years ago

What are you talking about? A live stream of the Twitter admin UI pressing the "ban account" button? I don't think you've thought this through.

Rebelgecko2• 6 years ago

Trump is currently tweeting about how this warning message is taking away his 1st amendment rights to free speech, and constitutes interference in the 2020 election. Can't wait for these tweets to get the same warning.

[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12654275381401886...

zozbot234• 6 years ago

is taking away his 1st amendment rights to free speech

Does he have to be on Twitter? I mean, if Hillary can set up a mail server, surely Donald can host a Mastodon instance.

jedieaston• 6 years ago

Or shoot, get a dev team together to write a microblogging platform hosted at whitehouse.gov. Then they could even write a client that was secure enough to run on the president’s cell phone, and they don’t have to worry about third-party interests (if they exist). Just have whatever is posted on that site mirrored to @POTUS on Twitter, and if that get suspended, then the primary source still exists.

Balgair2• 6 years ago

Most of his 'brand' is based on Twitter these days. I would doubt that he will do much of anything. You know all of the posts here on HN about basing your entire company on the platform of someone else? Well, here is a good example.

pedroma• 6 years ago

I should probably sell my Twitter shares soon.

thomascgalvin2• 6 years ago

Jesus goddamned Christ, even the President of the United States doesn't realize that a corporation is incapable of violating your First Amendment rights.

odkamkfn3• 6 years ago

he doesn't mention the first amendment - free speech is about more than american laws.

Saying that what twitter is doing is "stifling free speech" is a matter of opinion, and while you can certainly argue against the statement there's no need for the amendments to the us constitution to come into it.

rsynnott• 6 years ago

That’s not even the issue. If the government said he was lying, that wouldn’t impact his first amendment rights; pointing out a lie is not censorship.

grecy• 6 years ago

The President of the United States of America doesn't understand the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America has absolutely nothing to do with private companies limiting anyone's speech.

odkamkfn3• 6 years ago

Where does he mention the 1st amendment?

blhack9• 6 years ago

I'm finding the response people are having to this mail in voting thing to be...puzzling.

It's not a ridiculous thing to wonder about how susceptible mail in voting is to fraud, and it seems like some of us are putting blinders on simply due to our distaste for the current president.

If we were to hold a hackathon with a $100,000 prize for the most plausible path to exploit mail in voting in order to swing an election, are people implying that there would be no entries? Or maybe no viable entries? That's ridiculous.

Here's some spitballing: (eh, I removed this. I don't think brainstorming how to committ election fraud is a good idea. I'm assuming that readers of hacker news can probably figure out some relatively obvious ways of casting doubt into the outcome of a mail in election)

How are people looking at what recently happened with 100s of millions of dollars of fraud being committed against various US unemployment systems, and not thinking that other systems might be at risk as well?

Remember the Iowa caucus? That was a hastily put together vote reporting system, not even meant for tallying, and look at what a disaster it was. Now we're expecting that states will radically alter their voting system, in 5 months, and that it won't be vulnerable to interference?

To be clear: I LIKE mail in voting. I have permanent mail in voting status in my state (Arizona), and my wife and I usually get breakfast at our favorite restaurant and spend HOURS meticulously researching every candidate and BI on the form. Being able to take that amount of time is fantastic, and a luxury I wish everybody could have.

But it doesn't have to be so polar. I like mail in voting, obviously, but I'm not so stupid as to think that it cannot possibly be criticized. I am a hacker after all.

Boo to twitter for this. This is twitter obviously putting their finger on the scale of an election, and after all of the drama surrounding the idea that foreign actors might have purchased a few 10s of thousands of dollars of facebook ads, I'd hope that Americans would have a distrust a company where foreign entities have a major stake doing such a thing. Not acceptable in my opinion.

Just to highlight my point a little further: here is an article from the nytimes highlighting that mail in voting is far more vulnerable to fraud than in person voting: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-...

Here’s a quote from the article:

Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show.

and another:

Election experts say the challenges created by mailed ballots could well affect outcomes this fall and beyond.

And another:

The trend will probably result in more uncounted votes, and it increases the potential for fraud. While fraud in voting by mail is far less common than innocent errors, it is vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting

So who is to be believed here? Twitter? The New York Times? Why aren’t the experts from this article being listened to?

wwright2• 6 years ago

Trump isn’t really “criticizing” mail-in voting in a responsible and measured way here though, is he? He’s claiming that it is a scam by his enemies that will definitely result in massive voting fraud. Is there any evidence for him to make those claims at all? Is there any other way he could have responded, even if he did genuinely care about empowering citizens to vote?

adrianmonk• 6 years ago

You got downvoted, but I'm not sure why since Trump literally made that accusation two days ago:

"The Democrats are trying to Rig the 2020 Election, plain and simple!"

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12647175457870069...

CapricornNoble8• 6 years ago

>He’s claiming that it is a scam by his enemies that will definitely result in massive voting fraud. Is there any evidence for him to make those claims at all?

I think the rationale is that the existing incidence of local ballot fraud points at a widespread, under-reported problem that doesn't inspire confidence in the process.

Voting by mail is pretty normal to me, being in the military and outside of my home state for most of my adult life, but it's about as secure as WEP encryption for your Wi-Fi.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/voter-fraud-philadelphia-ward-...

https://www.dailybreeze.com/2016/11/03/how-more-than-80-elec...

https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/datab...

JacksonGariety• 6 years ago

It's called black and white thinking. This side is good, and that side is bad. The hallmark of a weak intellect.

archgoon• 6 years ago

I live in Washington State. I mailed my vote in for the 2016 election; doing this is not unprecedented. Why aren't all the expat ballots not faked?

notyourday• 6 years ago

There are lot of interesting rules about such ballots. For example, some states do not count them at all unless the margin of victory is less than the number of eligible or returned absentee ballots.

blhack9• 6 years ago

Yes and I live in Arizona and mailed in my ballot for the 2016 election. The point is not that it is possible to do some mail in voting. The point is that it isn't ridiculous to think that mail in voting could be succeptible to fraud. Certainly not so much so that twitter should be trying to influence an election in this way.

asdfasgasdgasdg• 6 years ago

I think most opponents are not questioning the possibility of hacking mail in election systems. I don't know if the idea you posted would have worked because lots of people can spitball ideas without fully thinking them through. Even so, proponents contest the likelihood of that happening balanced against other considerations, like the disenfranchisement of those who cannot or will not reach a polling place for health reasons.

There is also the question of differential susceptibility. Sure election fraud is possible with mail in ballots. I'd even stipulate that it's easier than casting fraudulent in person votes. But I think it remains to be answered how easily it can be scales, and whether the rewards are worth the risk this would pose to perpetrators' freedom.

slg4• 6 years ago

The issue is that mail in voter fraud doesn't scale and you need scale to turn a national election. So you can argue this is a concern in general, but someone arguing this is a real problem for the integrity of the 2020 presidential election is being disingenuous at best.

blhack9• 6 years ago

Is this true? I don't think it is, and I think that has been borne out in several of our most recent presidential elections. In the last election alone, Clinton won NH by a mere 2700 votes, for instance.

cgy12• 6 years ago

Elections are run by the states, not by the Federal government. If Washington, the 13th most populous state can conduct elections purely via mail-in ballots, why not any other state?

tylerhou2• 6 years ago

I think it's reasonable to wonder if mail-in ballots are susceptible to fraud, but there is not a lot of evidence that such fraud is widespread. In particular, Trump's tweet is completely off base with what election experts already know about voter fraud.

Now we're expecting that states will radically alter their voting system, in 5 months, and that it won't be vulnerable to interference?

Are mail in ballots for everyone really a "radical alteration" of their voting system? Local governments already have the capacity to send and receive thousands of pieces of mail, and the method of counting ballots is the exact same.

nickff• 6 years ago

I am not sure whether there has ever been mail-in voter fraud, but it seems like the relevant agencies actively or passively avoid collection of data which might demonstrate or disprove such fraud. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

blhack9• 6 years ago

Are mail in ballots for everyone really a "radical alteration" of their voting system? Local governments already have the capacity to send and receive thousands of pieces of mail, and the method of counting ballots is the exact same.

How would you set up this system if you were tasked with it?

bosswipe3• 6 years ago

I could accept that argument if it were being made in good faith, maybe there is some real evidence that mail in voting is more susceptible to fraud. But the argument is not being made in good faith, the argument is part of a long on-going coordinated effort across Republican governments at all levels to limit the people's right to vote.

myko• 6 years ago

Boo to twitter for this. This is twitter obviously putting their finger on the scale of an election,

Pointing out that trump is lying isn't a bad thing.

senectus1• 6 years ago

I mean, its hard to say that no voter fraud isnt going to happen...

but for it to happen in any meaningful way is super super unlikely as most other democracy's around the world can attest to.

he's technically right, but its not going to be in the order of even 1%. even if EVERY person in the US voted by mail, fraud on a level that would less than 1% of the entire vote.

Its a stupid blatant obvious ploy to try and gerrymander the vote.

fzeroracer5• 6 years ago

I'm more curious as to why you're giving Trump such a high benefit of the doubt giving his rampant lies in the past.

The reality is that most mail-in voting operates via what is effectively a two factor auth system or a handshake authentication system. Person A gets official mail being told they can register to vote. Person A goes to site and registers to vote. Then they receive a ballot sometime before election day, fill it out, certify that they are who they are, then it goes out.

The government can send a further correspondence indicating that you voted and where to check your vote to confirm. If someone attempts to vote multiple times using the same person this is easily verified. If the dead vote, you can cross-reference with obituary data to identify identity fraud. If someone votes for someone else (like their parents or their siblings) then that can be somewhat identified through the final check and letting people file a claim.

The reality is that actual fraud for mail-in votes is incredibly low and committing mass fraud requires the fraud to occur at the point of ballot counting. At which point you have a politician issue [1] not a voter issue. Which again, is pretty easily caught. The increase in mail-in fraud is likely offset by the disenfranchised voters that could gain the ability to vote as well as the voters in areas without easy access to voting booths.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-...

blhack9• 6 years ago

It's frustrating that you think I'm giving Trump some credibility here. I'm not. He's an idiot, but that doesn't mean it is appropriate for twitter to behave this way.

_vertigo• 6 years ago

I think it's important to weigh whether the person you're arguing with is making their argument in good faith. Is Trump making a nuanced argument that weighs the pros and cons of mail-in voting? No, he's clearly not. If you want to have a debate about the pros and cons of mail-in ballots, you can't have it in that context, because the other person isn't trying to debate, they're trying to dominate the discussion and cow the opposition.

Someone should coin a word for the act of getting nerd sniped, but rather than getting distracted by a fun puzzle you're sitting down trying to account for all of the nuances of an argument clearly made in bad faith.

occasionopinion3• 6 years ago

Trump is not "wondering". His statement was unambiguous: "There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent."

This is an unproven statement. Numerous elections experts disagree with it. Why is Twitter not within their rights to warn people of this?

blhack9• 6 years ago

Trump doesn't have a crystal ball.

"NO WAY (ZERO CHANCE) THE YANKEES ARE GOING TO WIN THE WORLD SERIES!"

Am I making a statement of fact, or stating an opinion here? Should twitter fact check this statement with some ambiguous "experts" who think that the yankees are the best team of them all and WILL win the world series?

klyrs3• 6 years ago

From Twitter's statement:

Trump falsely claimed that California will send mail-in ballots to "anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there." In fact, only registered voters will receive ballots.

This not "wondering about how susceptible mail in voting is to fraud," it's an outright lie.

blhack9• 6 years ago

In fact, only registered voters will receive ballots.

How could you possibly know this, and how could twitter possibly know this? Surely that is the intent, but what do you make of stories like this one: https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/11/05/goldstein-investi...

"Only registered voters will receive ballots", you cannot state a future event as a fact, since it hasn't actually happened yet. Stories like the one linked show that in the past, California has had problems with this.

Should twitter now fact check their fact checking? Perhaps the idea of future-telling is flawed to begin with and twitteer should not attempt to be a source of truth!

IAmEveryone2• 6 years ago

People have been voting by mail for decades, in the US and many other democracies. There haven't been any incidents. And, yes, I am convinced wide-scale fraud would be almost impossible to hide: you can't pull off any fraud without, for example, many voters turning up at polling places even though they have been mailed a ballot. Or people noticing the voter rolls show them having voted when they didn't. Or whatever scheme you are using to intercept thousands of individual letters addressed to individual residences being noticed. Or sudden, unexplained changes in participation being noticed. Or many dead people somehow voting because you can't possibly stay up-to-date with all recent deaths in the community.

And, of course, the discussion isn't actually about voting-by-mail, yes-or-now? Because that has been possible for a long time and isn't going to change. The discussion is about making it easier and/or the default to protect people from communicable diseases.

The issue, then, isn't even if voting by mail allows fraud. It's if the likelihood of fraud is significantly higher when, say, 50% instead of 30% choose that option.

This is yet another blatantly obvious attempt to stack the deck in Republican's favour. It's sickening to see people pretend to care about the integrity of democracy by engaging with all these phantom debates about voter fraud, in the complete absence of any actual fraud happening (except that Republican in South Caroline, of course).

Meanwhile, real damage is done to democracy by the unrelenting attempts to selectively make it harder for people to vote. Take a look at these changes in polling locations in Milwaukee for a blatant example (the red, suburban spots are predominantly Republican locations, while the urban core leans democratic) : https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYoIrdZXQAILKlB.jpg

root_axis6• 6 years ago

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYoIrdZXQAILKlB.jpg*

Am I misunderstanding something? Are you saying they completely closed down all those polling stations? It seems like the less populated areas have more* polling stations than denser ones, what is the justification for this?

CapricornNoble8• 6 years ago

>in the complete absence of any actual fraud happening

Which of these examples of election fraud are...not examples of voter fraud?

https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/datab...

root_axis6• 6 years ago

It's not a ridiculous thing to wonder about how susceptible mail in voting is to fraud, and it seems like some of us are putting blinders on simply due to our distaste for the current president.

You scoff at the reaction yet you've surgically extracted the political context of Trump's motivations for disparaging mail-in voting from your analysis. There isn't a new developing threat to mail-in votes, Trump has a clear political agenda. In Trump's own words a couple months back:

The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again

Can you at least pretend to understand why some people might have a hard time accepting Trump's credibility on the issue?

snowwrestler3• 6 years ago

There is no need to do this much intellectual work on behalf of the president.

If he has an argument to make, let him advance it. If he fails to make a compelling case, it's not our job to look up citations and write paragraphs to fill in the gaps.

Also, please remember the context. The only reason so many states are considering mail-in voting now is because they are concerned that huge numbers of voters will stay away from physical polling places.

This is not a matter of "pick the theoretically best voting system." This is a matter of "how can we hold an election without accidentally killing thousands of old people by communicable disease."

I don't have to think that mail-in voting is perfect to prefer it over radically depressing turnout.

dmode2• 6 years ago

You could literally make the same argument about in person voting. How hard is it to get a fake id ? How about hacking ballot machines ? How about compromised ballot counters ? Yet, there is this weird focus on mailed ballots, which really should be default in a 21st century democracy. Trump is arguing in bad faith

dingaling• 6 years ago

Yet, there is this weird focus on mailed ballots

It's not that weird. Mailed ballots can be coerced quite trivially at home, out of the view of authorities; no technology hacks or fake ID needed. That's why some of the "fact check" figures themselves are nonsense , such as the one claiming that only 0.00006% of mail votes are fraudulent. That's based on convictions. Nobody knows the real number.

In Northern Ireland postal voting is strictly controlled and monitored and permitted only in individually-reviewed case, because we had decades of coerced fraud by balaclaved men with baseball bats.

hadrien01• 6 years ago

The warning links to this page: https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384

It's a sort of article (I didn't know Twitter had this type of format, I really like it, weirdly enough) that contains an introduction text and a 'What you need to know' paragraph, followed by fact-checking tweets from press organizations.

I know where the tweets come from, but who has written the introduction and summary paragraphs, and who has compiled those tweets and photos in that order?

aspenmayer• 6 years ago

Here’s the Twitter trends FAQ, which is where I would expect the answers to your questions to be found, yet there’s not much info on this page. Basically they say trends are determined by an algorithm, but that there are also humans in the loop.

https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-trending-f...

piotrkaminski• 6 years ago

According to Ars Technica [1], this page is "created and managed by our global curation team".

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/twitters-first-f...

dbbk5• 6 years ago

To be specific it's a Twitter Moment

xeeeeeeeeeeenu• 6 years ago

This what a 2012 New York Times article[1] said about mail-in ballots:

Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.

I'm sorry, but that so-called "fact checking" looks like a classic case of "Trump said something is bad, so we must defend that thing at all costs".

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-...

2019-nCoV5• 6 years ago

This is not going to end well. Every single aspect of life that cannot be rigorously tested under the scientific method is destined to become a partisan topic.

There is no way to be sure if mail-in ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent.

canada_dry• 6 years ago

Every single aspect of life that cannot be rigorously tested under the scientific method is destined to become a partisan topic.

Remind me again how rigorously testing under a scientific method has quelled any misinformation these days??

2019-nCoV5• 6 years ago

Do you have a contrary example?

fzeroracer5• 6 years ago

Considering mail-in voting has been put through the ringer in multiple states (both red and blue!) with very little voter fraud statistically, it seems like these days the partisan topics consist of reality vs Trump.

This is something that's been statistically proven to work and yet the amount of people I see leaping to his very ignorant claims of this topic here is disappointing. Can you back up the claims that mail-in ballots will be substantially fraudulent at any level beyond baseless speculation?

2019-nCoV5• 6 years ago

Has there been a more polarising American politician than Trump in living memory? Voter fraud is not a constant. It is completely dynamic. Just his Tweet completely changes reality. Now, if it does proceed, we'll see increased scrutiny of mail-in voting, which in turn would reduce fraud. This would then be cited by opponents as another counter-example, when in reality the increased scrutiny was the catalyst.

drak0n1c• 6 years ago

A judge in Philly was just convicted of fraudulent ballot stuffing in multiple elections. He actually added enough votes to swing multiple results. If we can question the security vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines, why can’t we also question the implementation of mail-in voting and how it can enable similar ballot-filling and stuffing?

https://www.inquirer.com/news/voter-fraud-philadelphia-ward-...

User23• 6 years ago

Before I clicked on the link, I assumed this was yet another egregious lie. But this one really doesn't qualify. It falls squarely in the category of reasonable opinions. Let's look at the claim: "There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent". Clearly the veracity of the statement rests on the word "substantially." It's inconceivable that no one ever takes, for example, an elderly relative's mail in ballot and votes it fraudulently. So for this to be a reasonable opinion, it merely has to be reasonably possible for the claim to be true.

So, let's consider if such fraud could possibly be substantial. Let's use California as an example. Registering to vote is easy, all you need is a web browser[1] and a mailing address where you reside or with a resident willing to give you ballots or ignorant that they are receiving them[2]. Also, the State of California faces an impractically large legal hurdle to reject suspected fraudulent ballots[3] so it can be assumed that most if not all will be accepted. It seems clear based on the observable facts that substantial fraud is certainly possible under the California regime. Please note I am not claiming such fraud actually happens, merely that it is easily practicable for an organization as well organized as, say, a political party. To be honest, I bet literally hundreds if not thousands of readers on this site could build "California vote fraud as as service" as a side gig. Let's disrupt the electoral process for a billion dollar valuation!

From this I conclude that while I personally disagree with the President, this particular statement is a (probably, I sure hope) incorrect opinion, not a factually incorrect statement.

[1] https://covr.sos.ca.gov/

[2] https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/politics/more-than-80-bal...

[3] https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-aler...

occasionopinion3• 6 years ago

It's not an opinion, it's a statement. Therein lies the rub.

There is no reasonable interpretation of "There is NO WAY (ZERO!)" to mean "there may possibly be".

e: The President just helpfully tweeted out in support of my argument:

"They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect"

username90• 6 years ago

There is evidence that mail in ballots causes more problems though. However to find unbiased information about it you have to search for articles from a time before it became political.

Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.

New York times article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-...

Consultant324523• 6 years ago

To be clear, it's a prediction of the future. Let's not pretend that predictions of the future are statements of fact.

Fjolsvith6• 6 years ago

Next, Twitter will start fact checking every Bigfoot and UFO tweet.

dmode2• 6 years ago

California has been running absentee ballots for a long time. Are you saying all of them had "substantial fraud" ? If so, why didn't the President, who had control of 3 branches of govt and had a commission to prove election fraud, couldn't find any evidence ?

blockmarker2• 6 years ago

What I heard was that California refused to cooperate, and the commission couldn't do much without their cooperation. Though this is only a rumor I heard.

lordlimecat2• 6 years ago

Why not just claim that your network could not possibly be compromised despite no IDS / HIDS / AV? I'm sure there would be no evidence there, either.

What evidence of fraud would you expect? How would anyone know? And given the sophistication of fraud these days (bypassing 2fa, number porting, etc) - - how could you possibly expect zero fraud in a system whose only controls are human?

lordlimecat2• 6 years ago

Please note I am not claiming such fraud actually happens,

Though it would be naieve to assume it does not. Internet based crime goes through incredible hurdles today to bypass 2fa and anti fraud measures which are substantially more sophisticated than what the voting system has in place.

To suggest that criminals and nation-state actors would spend enormous effort to spread misinformation and steal credit cards, but completely ignore the far easier voting system, is absurd.

JeremyNT• 6 years ago

So for this to be a reasonable opinion, it merely has to be reasonably possible for the claim to be true.

This position makes no sense to me, because the original statement indicates certainty. Therefore, you need to test the opposite of what you suggest, i.e. the statement can only be true if the election must contain substantial fraud.

When you negate the double negative, the claim in the tweet is:

mail-in ballots will certainly be substantially fraudulent

Therefore if there is any chance that they will not contain substantial fraud, it is clearly a false statement.

LargoLasskhyfv3• 6 years ago

Can confirm a similar situtation for the "Briefwahl" in Germany. The topic came up while discussing the security of electronic voting years ago. It was sobering.

belorn• 6 years ago

From my fact checking, I compare to nations which also allow mail-in ballots but have much more stricter and expensive measure in place to prevent fraud. If the twitter fact checkers are correct then there is no substantially risk with mail-in ballots used by California, then using more strict measures are a waste.

Sweden where I live has several conditions on mail-in ballots. 1: it is only allowed as an exception for Swedish citizen currently residing in a other country. 2: A person must identify themselve through an embassy or the digital identity system which require a Swedish bank to perform identification. The first condition limits the scope of attacks and makes large scale attacks quite visible, while the second condition is very hard to perform. If you could break into hundred of thousands of peoples bank accounts, or take control over an embassy, voting fraud is unlikely your first priority.

foogazi3• 6 years ago

(Posted this in another thread)

No what Mr. POTUS said was > There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent

Translation: 100% certainty that Mail-In Ballots are substantially fraudulent

He specified a 100% certainty of substantial election fraud

Consultant324523• 6 years ago

I think the place where this falls apart is that he's talking about future events. It's a prediction about the future. Unless you believe he's insinuating supernatural abilities to tell the future exactly, he's just expressing his personal level of confidence about his prediction... which is an opinion.

The real problem here is calling what Twitter did a fact check. Because what Twitter did was just promote opposing opinions/predictions about the same future event. Neither side can make statements of fact about the future, they can only state their opinion and express their level of confidence in that opinion.

Balgair2• 6 years ago

It's a strange decision by Twitter here, but they are in a strange position.

Donny, love him or hate him, does say a fair few things that are ... questionable. Jack has talked about this a bit, and their conclusion thus far has been that anything he says, by virtue of the office, is newsworthy enough. Policies for thee, but not for he. It's been a battle with users, but everyone seems to just grumble along.

That policy has worked up until today.

A lot of work went into this decision. They A/B tested the color of the note, likely the font, the positioning, the exact words, the fact check itself, etc. This thing went through meeting after meeting and was run past some good legal counsel. Twitter isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but it's also not a rusty shovel. They red-teamed this a fair bit, I'd imagine. They must have known that Donny would not view it favorably and would do exactly what he is doing currently.

All the same they went ahead and decided to make the move at the end of May, ~6 months before the 'fit hits the shan'.

Why?

Their stock is, well, fairly ok. Jack seems to be doing alright. Monthly users are flat-ish since 2015, but compared to FB, it's a bit of a wash.

quxbar• 6 years ago

I don't know why all these expert voting frauds don't just take up regular mail fraud?

2019-nCoV5• 6 years ago

Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. 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....
....Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!

Whelp, it was fun while it lasted.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12654275381401886...

Fjolsvith6• 6 years ago

Twitter would just shit themselves if Trump set up a Mastadon server and moved there.

techntoke2• 6 years ago

I think they'd be happy, dems would be happy and repubs would be happy. Let's make it happen.

techntoke2• 6 years ago

Forgot that repubs don't just want free speech. They want everyone to have to see it and accept their opinion as facts.

rurban• 6 years ago

Lol. He often twitters nonsense, but in this case Twitter itself is spreading false information. Of course mail ballots are totally insecure, esp. for nation state actors. Looks like Twitter joined collaboration with the CIA now, who is the relevant nation state actor in this case. There are multiple documented cases.

Same for his Hydroxychloriquine argument, which he promoted as good prevention (which is good information with scientific studies proving it), and this was labeled as false and dangerous information. Probably because Chloroquine phosphat is somewhat dangerous (different drug), and it has no proven treatment effects.

Please fact check the fact check warnings, and beware of dependent media.

__s• 6 years ago

I'd just like to commend Twitter for going the route I suggested YouTube take https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23266238

No need to censor, only offer a second opinion

blockmarker2• 6 years ago

I am glad that unelected corporations are protecting us from the opinions of elected officials.

anonymouswacker• 6 years ago

Twitter deserves our respect for stepping out of their lane (marketing/advertising) to ensure that all information on their website is 100% scientifically accurate. Thank you, selfless heroes!

im3w1l• 6 years ago

More and more it seems to be devolving into:

Someone: I don't trust the establishment

Establishment fact checker: FALSE. The establishment is perfectly trustworthy.

Maybe we need to start talking about The Right to be Suspicious or something.

CawCawCaw• 6 years ago

So they finally did something about his endless lies after four years. Well, well.

Simulacra2• 6 years ago

If Twitter is going to do this to one they must do it to all. If not then they are not being a neutral platform.

Simulacra2• 6 years ago

If Twitter is going to enact this policy to one entity they must do it to all. If not then they are not being a neutral platform.

Twitter tags Trump tweet with fact-checking warning

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