False news swirls around officer in fatal arrest

OAKLAND, Calif. — Twitter has taken the unprecedented step of adding fact-check warnings to two of President Donald Trump’s tweets that falsely called mail-in ballots “substantially fraudulent” and predicted a “Rigged Election.” On Wednesday, the president threatened to impose new regulation on social media companies or even to “close them down.”

But Twitter’s move and Trump’s reaction raise a host of questions, including why Twitter acted now, how it decides when to use such warnings and what its newly assumed role means for the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

QUESTION: Twitter has resisted taking action on Trump’s tweets for years, despite the president’s history of spreading misinformation and abuse on the platform. What changed?

ANSWER: Trump has pushed Twitter’s boundaries for years, using it to attack rivals, speak to his base and simply vent. Until Tuesday, he had never faced sanctions — though other world leaders had.

But things started to change earlier this year when coronavirus misinformation began to spread. Twitter began flagging tweets that spread disputed or misleading claims about the virus with “get the facts” links to more information, including news stories and fact checks.

Twitter said it would be adding such warnings to other tweets that could confuse users. Tweets deemed “harmful” would be removed altogether. Trump’s vote-bymail tweets were the first non-pandemic ones Twitter flagged this way.

Those tweets met specific Twitter criteria for misinformation on certain topics, including the coronavirus, how to vote in elections and the census. There is no such policy for other topics. Earlier Trump tweets about Joe Scarborough, which baselessly suggested the television host and former GOP congressman had committed murder 20 years ago, didn’t fall into a specific misinformation category, which is likely why they remain untouched.

Twitter’s action is “indicative the public outcry reached such a fever pitch that the company feels like it has to take action,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a communications professor at Syracuse University who uses they/them pronouns. It’s a “sign that Twitter fears public opinion more than the president who cries wolf too often,” they added.

QUESTION: Could Trump make good on his threats to regulate or even shut down social media companies? Could Congress or the Federal Communications Commission help him do this?

ANSWER: It’s highly unlikely.

Jack Balkin, a Yale University law professor and First Amendment expert, said any attempt to regulate social media companies for the content on their site would likely need congressional input and approval — and would almost certainly face strong legal challenges. The FCC, meanwhile, has no jurisdiction over internet companies like Twitter.

What is clear, Balkin said, is the limit on Trump’s authority to impose his own rules. While the president could ask for an investigation or issue some type of executive order, he can’t override laws written by Congress and rooted in the constitution. But that’s not the point, he said.

“This is an attempt by the president to, as we used to say in basketball, work the refs,” Balkin said. “He’s threatening and cajoling with the idea that these folks in their corporate board rooms will think twice about what they’re doing.”

A Minneapolis police officer videotaped on Monday holding a black man to the ground with his knee during an arrest has become the target of false claims on social media that attempt to tie him to political agendas and racist ideologies.

Twitter and Facebook posts with hundreds of thousands of views on Wednesday claimed Officer Derek Chauvin was pictured wearing a “Make Whites Great Again” hat and standing onstage at a Donald Trump rally, neither of which turned out to be true.

The spread of false information was so rampant that the president of the Minneapolis police union set the record straight, telling The Associated Press that none of the officers involved in Monday’s incident were at the Trump rally in Minneapolis last October.

Chauvin has been the subject of national attention since a video emerged Monday that showed him kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed black man during an arrest outside a south Minneapolis convenience store.

In the video captured by a bystander, George Floyd can be seen gasping for breath on the ground while Chauvin pins him to the pavement with his knee.

Floyd was pronounced dead at the hospital Monday, and Chauvin and three other officers were dismissed from the department on Tuesday.

News of the incident sparked protests in Minneapolis and evoked nationwide outcry. It also contributed to the rapid spread of social media posts misidentifying Chauvin as the subject of politicized photographs.

One post circulating widely across social media juxtaposed a screenshot of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck with a photo of a man wearing a red baseball cap that said “Make Whites Great Again.”