It seemed that on Saturday, Twitter applied more limitations to the Twitter account of President Trump, as some users found that the ability to like, retweet, or respond to his tweets with “disputed” labels was not working.
It also appeared that copying the URL to one of the tweets in dispute was disabled, and quote-tweets did not appear in the search results.
Some users were able to view and like Trump’s messages, several users verified by clicking through the alert label that they could connect with “disputed” tweets, but others on Twitter could not.
In an email to The Verge on Saturday, a Twitter spokesman said that the site “inadvertently took action to restrict engagements,” on Trump’s tweet, and had since reversed the action. Tweets that breach the Civic Integrity Policy of Twitter “will continue to be labeled to give anyone who might see the Tweet more context,” the spokesperson said.
Ahead of the November 3rd US presidential election, Twitter started adding “disputed” and other warning labels to tweets containing election disinformation, and limiting contact with those tweets.
It reported that it will be possible to mark tweets with premature claims of victory, delete tweets intended to encourage interference in the election or election results, and make it harder to access tweets from political figures with more than 100,000 followers, including President Trump, who would earn a “misleading” label.
President Trump has tweeted several falsehoods about the election since the presidential race was called for by Joe Biden, stoking conspiracy theories that it was “rigged,” and alleging that there was systemic fraud, without citing facts.
On Saturday, he tweeted “I WIN THE ELECTION IN A LANDSLIDE, but mind, I just think not all the fake voters and fraud that miraculously floated in from everywhere in terms of legal votes! What an embarrassment! ”
On Friday, the Supreme Court denied an appeal by the Texas attorney general to reverse election results in four main states, the most failed effort by the president and his team to try to change the results of the election in court.