TWITTER DOUBLES DOWN

Twitter this week continued to add fact-check labels to hundreds of posts on its platform, a move that came as the Trump administration issued an executive order targeting the broad immunity that social media companies have over the content posted by their users.

The plans from the Trump administration followed Twitter’s decision on Tuesday to add fact-check labels to the president’s tweets for the first time.

Trump has repeatedly accused the social media company of silencing conservative viewpoints.

Twitter’s policies call for adding labels to potentially misleading information on subjects including elections and the coronavirus outbreak. The company this week added its fact-check label to posts from Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, claiming that COVID-19 originated in a lab in the U.S. because the posts contained “potentially misleading content” about the coronavirus, a Twitter official told The Hill.

Multiple tweets from Zhao now include “Get the facts about COVID-19” labels directing users to news reports noting that evidence suggests the novel coronavirus originated in animals and not a lab.

Twitter also added labels to posts falsely claiming that a Minneapolis police officer involved in the arrest of George Floyd was the same man pictured with a red “Make Whites Great Again” hat. The posts, some of which went viral earlier this week, now include “manipulated media” labels appended to them.

Hundreds of tweets like the one Ice Cube shared were flagged based on Twitter’s “synthetic and manipulated media policy,” a spokesperson said, noting that the company began taking action on them on Wednesday.