Twitter sets itself up for failure with ‘fact-check’ on Trump tweet

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Washington Examiner

President Trump and Big Tech companies have never really gotten along. But the president’s conflict with Silicon Valley escalated Tuesday evening when Twitter appended a “fact-check” with additional information to two of his tweets speculating about election fraud and mail-in ballots.

 

“Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 election,” Trump tweeted in a furious backlash. “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!”

While Twitter is hardly censoring Trump — he did react by bashing the social media company publicly in more tweets, after all — its foray into “fact-checking” statements from political figures posted to the platform sets a troubling precedent indeed.

For one, it’s hard to see why anyone, regardless of his or her political persuasion, ought to trust Twitter employees to serve as some sort of unbiased referee and arbiter of the “truth.”

Like most Big Tech companies, Twitter is overwhelmingly staffed with Democrats and liberals. According to OpenSecrets.org, 99.8% of 2020 election donations made from individuals affiliated with Twitter have gone to Democrats. So it’s hardly surprising to see wild examples emerge such as Twitter’s head of site integrity, which is responsible for rule enforcement, being exposed for tweeting that Trump officials are “actual Nazis” and calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “personality-free bag of farts.”

It’s just unreasonable for us to rely on these people to “fact-check” politically controversial statements posted to Twitter’s platform. Even if it tries to be fair, and I'm willing to assume it would, unconscious bias will push almost all its errors, missteps, and blind spots against right-of-center figures.

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Who checks the fact-checkers?

[Valin]