Pamela Cruz and Cristian Carlos. Peninsula 360 Press.
"Desperation gives courage to the coward," historian Thomas Fuller once said, and the U.S. presidential election has brought out the real substance of what Republican candidate Donald Trump is made of, and through his Twitter account @realDonaldTrump, he has expressed his mood in the face of what could be his defeat.
After the vote count began on Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 3, in what is perhaps the closest election in the country's history, the national map began to turn red and blue, and so did Twitter.
The reactions were moving forward, and with them the comments of Donald Trump, who seeks to ensure four more years in the presidential chair, everything was going well until the Democratic candidate Joe Biden began to overcome it.
Twitter's guidelines began to be enforced on election night, and while the social network is monitoring Trump's tweets, we're likely to see very few of them scattered not only in people's timelines - tweets with this warning are limited to the person's profile - but for the Democratic candidate's followers.
It was at 11:49pm on November 3rd that the hints of anger began: "We're going BIG, but they're trying to STEAL the election. We will never let them do it. You can't cast votes after the polls are closed."
The reaction of the social network of the little blue bird was to put a warning. "Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet has been objectionable and may be misleading regarding how to participate in an election or other civic process.".
Moreover, it would be the first wake-up call for an already obviously upset Donald Trump, who a few hours later would give a brief speech to voters to tell them that everything was going great, that he "had a great night" and that he had surely already won. Nothing could have been more wrong.
Specifically, the social network establishes two cases for "conversation moderation" on Twitter about the U.S. elections; the first of the rules states that: "People on Twitter, including candidates for public office, may not claim an election victory before it is confirmed by the authorities".
This is just one of the measures that Twitter implemented for the general elections in the United States; as stated since October 9 in its official blog post where it urged Twitterers about the measures that would be taken into account for these publications to be "unamplified" or hidden. Twitter said that these elections represent "a safe, fair and legitimate democratic process".
By 9:04 am on Wednesday, November 4, Trump tweeted, "Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key states, in almost every state controlled by Democrats. Then, one by one, they began to magically disappear as surprise ballots were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the ?pollsters? got it completely and historically wrong!"
Again Twitter put a stop to it: the second to the account.
Just 13 minutes later (9:17 am) he had already returned to write on the network that, for four years he has loved to, from very early in the morning to make statements. "How is it that every time they count the postal vote dumps are so devastating in their percentage and destructive power?".
Doubt about what he had said just a few hours before, that he was doing very well and winning, began to take hold of him. By 9:35 a.m., the Republican said, "WHAT IS ALL THIS?" in all caps. And Twitter gave him the third warning.
10:55 a.m.: "They're finding Biden votes all over the place...in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. How bad for our country."
The little blue bird kept an eye on the statements and reminded users: "Learn about security efforts in the 2020 U.S. elections.".
Six minutes after his last tweet, Twitter retweeted one of his messages, which reads: "They are working hard to make the 500,000 vote lead in Pennsylvania disappear ? ASAP. Likewise Michigan and others.
At 12:43 p.m., the U.S. president considers it "terrible what's going on," saying that "Michigan has found a way at the ballot box to knock the wonderful young man, John James, out of the U.S. Senate."
Not even ten minutes had passed when the U.S. president tweeted again, this time to declare himself the winner in Pennsylvania, but with a more pessimistic tone, he referred to statements made by the "secretary of state" of Pennsylvania, Kathy Boockvar, saying that there are still "millions of ballots to be counted".
Three hours and one minute later, at 3:53 p.m., two more messages appeared on Donald Trump's account. In the first, that he had won the states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina as well as Michigan. Twitter put on warning this message that the information at the time of publication had not been released by an official count.
Subsequently, Trump claims that it has been "widely" reported that "a large number of ballots" have been "secretly" dumped. Twitter withheld the content of this particular tweet.
Realizing that both tweets had been tagged in the discord of conversation between Twitter's rules and Trump's misinformation, he adds nearly two hours later that "the damage to the integrity of the ?election? system was done and, with it, the presidential election It's something to discuss!"
Subsequently, and to prevent the Twitter algorithm from attacking Trump, he retweets Breitbart News information against the Attorney General of Pennsylvania and irregular acts at the polls in Detroit.
Then, and after a 12-hour break, Trump explodes: "STOP THE COUNTDOWN!" was the first thing he said this Thursday morning, November 5.
At 9:09 a.m., it was followed by another tweet from the president written in capital letters: "ANY VOTE THAT HAS ARRIVED AFTER VOTING DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!".
Twitter puts a stop for the fourth time and calls him to moderate, because his information is false and precise: "some of the votes still need to be counted".
Luckily for the Republican, Pennsylvania was added to the states won. Twenty more points for Donald Trump and so he celebrated via Twitter: "We legally won the state of Pennsylvania in a big way!
At 10:22 a.m., the president of the United States says he has "sufficient evidence" that there is "fraud" in state elections and voter fraud; consequently, they will act legally challenging the states where Joe Biden has won. "WE WILL WIN! America first!" he declared.
And, for the fifth time, Twitter puts a stop to it, since no authority has pointed out any incidences that indicate either of these two crimes.
It wasn't even halfway through the day when a "STOP THE FRAUD!" appeared on the account of the current president of the United States, @realDonaldTrump. Could it be that he has given up?
In the case of Trump's tweets, the US president is violating a very specific company rule that states that "we may currently tag Tweets that violate our policies against misleading civic integrity information."
In reality, the tweets are still there in case they want to be accessed via their original source; in this case, the profile of the person with "tagged" tweets; however, as we already announced in the 22:50 Pacific time cut-offIn the second instance, they declared that such tweets will not be taken into account in the algorithm of recommendations in personal timelines.
In doing so, Twitter hopes "this will further reduce the visibility of misleading information and encourage people to reconsider" disseminating messages that meet these characteristics. Finally, Twitter regrets the use of these measures and putting them into practice; however, it justifies itself by claiming that it represents "a worthwhile sacrifice to encourage more thoughtful and explicit amplification".
