Facebook and Twitter posted on Tuesday evening a sign on a post by Donald Trump that he might be misleading in the context of highly competitive elections that the US President declared he won before the vote counts are over, according to a scenario Social media has repeatedly anticipated it and raises major concerns.
Twitter blocked the tweet of the Republican president, who is running for a second term, to confront Democrat Joe Biden, providing a warning: "The content that was shared in this tweet has been partially or completely revoked and may be misleading about how to participate in the elections."
"We are far ahead, but they are trying to steal the election," Trump wrote. "We will never let them do that. Voting cards cannot be deposited after the polls are over."
The post was still visible on Facebook, but the network attached it to a link to its center for disseminating information about the elections, as it relayed official results that currently indicate intense competition in the race between Trump and Biden to collect the votes of the top electorate.
"Immediately after President Donald Trump began announcing the victory early, we reported reports on Facebook and Instagram indicating that the vote count is still running and no winner has yet been announced," the California-based media office announced.
These measures are part of the measures announced by Facebook and Twitter to take in such cases.
The Republican billionaire has been confirming for weeks that if he loses the election, it will be the result of fraud.
Trump delivered a brief speech on Wednesday as the vote counting was continuing, denouncing "fraud", declaring "we won the elections," and calling for "stopping all voting."
Social media networks took an unprecedented set of measures to ensure the integrity of the elections and restore their reputation after the 2016 elections witnessed large-scale interference by foreign parties to influence the results of the polls, especially through pages and groups on social media.
It seems that Facebook has become in control of monitoring these campaigns and responding to them, and its concerns are now focused on incitement to violence and all messages that may ignite the situation, including by extremist groups.
In this context, in early October, Facebook canceled accounts linked to the "Q-Inon" movement, the far-right pro-president, which promoted conspiracy theories.
"I fear the risk of civil unrest across the country," said the president of the Californian group, Mark Zuckerberg.
However, the election results so far are close, and Trump´s statements reinforce fears that political divisions will develop into violence, and that social media will be used to spread false posts.
And Facebook banned political ads and about social or electoral issues in the United States from Wednesday, probably for a week, in order to "reduce the risk of confusion or abuse."
However, these precautions did not convince a large part of civil society, which considered the efforts insufficient, especially in terms of combating media disinformation.
In this context, a fabricated and segmented video shows Joe Biden as if he says that the administration of former President Barack Obama has established a massive system of electoral fraud, which gathered about 17 million views on various sites, according to the non-governmental organization "Avaaz".
The organization warned in a statement Tuesday, "It is a major warning signal that reveals that the platforms are not ready yet."
It also denounced many rumors spread by the right claiming that "the left is preparing for a coup in the event of Trump´s re-election," and that "fraud and interference at the national level" will take place.
"Misinformation divides the American people," said Avaaz campaign manager Fadi Curran.
And to the public discussions add the problem of private chats.
“Messages telling people to go to vote without masks are spreading on Facebook groups,” Kayla Gugarti of the non-governmental organization Media Matters said in a report published on Tuesday evening. ".
Another organization, "Election Integrity Partnership," revealed that a search for key US states pointed to a network on YouTube that displayed a false number of votes directly, and the site deliberately blocked the video.
