San Francisco, (Asian independent) Twitter briefly restricted disputed election tweets by Donald Trump and disabled all kind of user engagement with those tweets, later admitting it “inadvertently” limited engagements and reversed the action.
Some users noticed that the ability to like, retweet or reply to Trump tweets with “disputed” labels was not working.
“Copying the URL to one of the disputed tweets also appeared to be disabled, and quote-tweets were not appearing in search results,” The Verge reported late on Saturday.
A Twitter spokesperson later said that it “inadvertently took action to limit engagements,” on Trump’s tweet and has since reversed the action.
Tweets that violate Twitter’s Civic Integrity Policy “will continue to be labeled in order to give more context for anyone who might see the Tweet,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying.
Twitter started applying “disputed” and other warning labels to tweets containing election misinformation ahead of the US presidential election on November 3, and flagged several Trumo tweets in the days to come.
Twitter on Saturday also flagged a series of tweets posted by Trump within a span of an hour.
The tweets said: “So, you’re the President of the US, and you just went through an election where you got more votes than any sitting President in history, by far – and purportedly lost.
“You can’t get ‘standing’ before the Supreme Court, so you ‘intervene’ with wonderful states that, after careful study and consideration, think you got ‘screwed’, something which will hurt them also.
“Many others likewise join the suit but, within a flash, it is thrown out and gone, without even looking at the many reasons it was brought. A rigged election, fight on.”
Twitter flagged the tweets and said: “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”
The micro-blogging site has flagged nearly all tweets by Trump has he continues to keep making “potentially misleading claims” about the outcome of one of the most contentious presidential races in the history of the US.
