One of the big questions heading into election night is whether former President Donald Trump will prematurely declare victory. The declaration will likely be accompanied by social media posts on platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, although it has not been confirmed whether any of them will remove the content.
He’s done the same thing before. Trump falsely declared himself the winner of the 2020 election, when many battleground states were still inconclusive. Counts were still being counted in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Many Republican lawmakers and experts condemned President Trump’s claims. “No, Trump hasn’t won the election yet. It would be highly irresponsible to say he did,” Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro said in an X post at the time. Trump’s own advisers are reportedly encouraging him to announce victory early.
“Premature declarations of victory intended to intimidate people from voting or suppress voting may be assessed under our Civic Integrity Policy,” X spokesperson Michael・Abboud told “WIRED”. “Community notes are an effective way to add helpful context to posts that may be misleading about voting results.”
X allows users to flag and correct misinformation on the platform through community notes. A recent study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that crowdsourced fact-checking efforts are not doing enough to correct false election claims.
Company X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, is already a hotbed of election misinformation, and that’s not likely to change any time soon. Last week, Musk’s America PAC launched an election integrity community on X, which has grown to nearly 50,000 members. The group said this would “increase incidents of voter fraud and irregularities seen during voting in the 2024 election.”
In 2020, Meta announced that it would be adding labels to early win posts. In a blog post for WIRED, Meta spokesperson Corey Chambliss said the company will remove misinformation related to voting dates, locations, times, and methods, as well as calls for voting-related violence. Explained. According to the blog post, Meta will also remove content containing false election results, but Chambliss did not respond to questions about whether the rules apply to President Trump.
“As with all of our policies, we will continue to monitor what is happening on our platforms,” Chambliss told WIRED on Tuesday.
However, advertisements that declare false results are prohibited. Meta, which has been banning new election ads for a week before Election Day, announced it would extend that ban until several days after the polls close, Axios reported on Monday.
