Twitter's integrity chief was never-Trumper

FPI / May 28, 2020

President Donald Trump said Twitter is "now interfering" in the 2020 presidential election after the social media platform "fact-checked" one of his tweets on the potential for massive fraud via the use of vote-by-mail.

The president on Wednesday warned social media companies that the federal government could “strongly regulate” or “close them down” if they continue to “silence conservative voices.”

On Tuesday, Trump tweeted on how states which plan on relying on mail-in-ballots in November's election are setting themselves up for substantial fraud.

"There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone.....

....living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!"

The president's concern that vote-by-mail will lead to widespread voter fraud is shared by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Hours after the tweet was posted, Twitter added a label to the bottom of the tweet reading, "Get the facts about mail-in ballots.”

Twitter went on to note in its "What to Know" section that "fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud."

Those "fact-checkers" being used by Twitter to dispute the president's assertion on vote-by-mail are from anti-Trump media outlets CNN and The Washington Post.

After Twitter added the label, Trump tweeted: ".@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...."

The president added: “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”

Trump tweeted on Wednesday: “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again.”

The president added: “Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!”

Two months ago, Twitter flagged a video uploaded by the Trump campaign as "manipulated media," but ignored the Trump campaign's efforts to have the platform flag a similar video uploaded by the Biden campaign.

"We always knew that Silicon Valley would pull out all the stops to obstruct and interfere with President Trump getting his message through to voters," Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. "Partnering with the biased fake news media 'fact checkers' is only a smoke screen Twitter is using to try to lend their obvious political tactics some false credibility. There are many reasons the Trump campaign pulled all our advertising from Twitter months ago, and their clear political bias is one of them."

Meanwhile, the head of Twitter's fact-checking team has a history of anti-Trump tweets.

Yoel Roth, whose official title at Twitter is head of Site Integrity, has previously tweeted that the Trump administration are Nazis, compared White House adviser Kellyanne Conway to Joseph Goebbels, and said fly over states are racist.

Conway, in an interview with Fox & Friends, said of Roth: "This guy is constantly attacking Trump voters, Trump, Mitch McConnell, you name it. He's the head of integrity at Twitter. It's horrible the way he looks at people who should otherwise have a free and clear platform on Twitter."

Free Press International