Twitter tighten rules to curb fake news ahead of US election

The American social networking service Twitter Inc announced that it will remove tweets encouraging people to interfere with the US election process or implementation of the results.

In a blog post, Twitter said that from next week users will get a prompt pointing them to reliable data before they retweet content that has been labeled as ‘misleading’ as the US elections set to take place on November 3 nears.

The microblogging network declared that it would add more warnings and restrictions on posts with misinformation which are from the US election candidates, campaigns and US-based accounts with more than 1 million followers or that have notable popularity.

As per reports Twitter, has said that it is experimenting various options to make their labeling more direct and clear and people will have to tap through several warnings before reaching these tweets. The users will only be allowed to quote such labeled tweets while likes, retweets and replies will be turned off.

Even though the the labels applied to tweets by the US President Trump has gained most attention, Twitter has also labeled thousands of other misleading posts and have also warned tweets that falsely claim a win for any candidate will also be labeled.

The social networking company has also put forward several temporary measures to slow people’s amplification of content, for instance from October 20 to at least the end of the US election week, users around the global pressing ‘retweet’ will be diverted first to the “quote tweet” button to enable people to add their commentary.

It will also stop showing trending topics without added context as well as the popping of ‘liked by’ recommendations in their timeline from people they do not know.

Social media firms are also under pressure to fight misinformation regarding the US elections and to prepare for a chance of violence or intimidation in the poll place. Earlier this week Facebook, the social media giant, said it would prohibit calls for poll watching which uses “militarized language.”