Facebook and TikTok have blocked hashtags used to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories about the US presidential election. The hashtags have generally revolved around baseless allegations that Democrats are trying to manipulate the election to defeat President Trump.
On Facebook, blocked hashtags include #stopthesteal, which has been widely used to make baseless allegations of electoral fraud by Democrats, and #sharpiegate, which wrongly claims that use of Sharpie markers caused the non assessment of his votes Trump in Arizona. TikTok excluded #sharpiegate, #stopthesteal and the general term #riggedelection. Both sets of blocked hashtags were detected by TechCrunch.
Although Twitter does not seem to have ruled out any hashtags that spread a theory conspiracy for the elections, the company adds warning tags to some tweets, saying they may contain inaccuracies information. Other tweets are marked with one message which encourages readers to learn more about election security efforts.
The removal of these conspiracy-focused hashtags is part of a wider effort by SOCIAL MEDIA platforms for the rapid elimination of election-related misinformation. Twitter has even pointed to tweets posted by Trump that make unfounded allegations of fraud or an inaccurate way in which all votes are counted.
Facebook has added similar tags, and yesterday "downloaded" a group of 300.000 members called "Stop the Steal", which included allegations of fraud without evidence. Facebook also said it "saw alarming calls for violence from members team's".
TikTok said blocking these hashtags was part of an "approach to misinformation, hate speech and more." content which violates our instructions ". The two hashtags were removed yesterday because "the content of these hashtags violated our policy," a spokesman for The Verge said.
"Twitter has been following the hashtag #StopTheSteal and related Tweets as a precaution since Tuesday morning," said a spokesman for The Verge. Twitter usually does not block hashtags, but it can prevent it trend of hashtags that violate policies content the company's.
Source of information: theverge.com
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