November 4, 2020

Trump Posted Election Night Disinformation. Twitter and Facebook Took Different Routes.

The platforms scramble responding to the president’s first unsubstantiated claims about the emerging results.

Trump at his campaign headquarters on Election Day.Alex Brandon/AP

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As anticipated, Donald Trump took to social media to weigh in prematurely on the election early on Wednesday morning, baselessly claiming on social media that “we are up BIG” but that “they are trying to STEAL the Election.”

Early results do not show Trump with a big lead, nor is there this evidence of a plot to steal the election from Trump. Accordingly Facebook and Twitter immediately took action on the claim, which Trump posted to both platforms, but with notably different approaches: Twitter aggressively shielded its users from the claim, while Facebook continued relaying it with a minor notification appended.

Twitter opted to outright block users from seeing one of Trump’s tweets unless they clicked a warning label saying the content was “disputed.”

Twitter explained that Trump’s tweet ran afoul of its Civic Integrity Policy.

Facebook, a larger platform with as much as eight times as many users, opted to not restrict the post at all, and instead put a label beneath reading “Final results may be different from initial vote counts.” Facebook signaled in a September blog post that instead of restricting such posts, it would apply an “informational label to content that seeks to delegitimize the outcome of the election,” or if a “candidate or campaign tries to declare victory before the final results,”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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