Trump vs Twitter showdown an 'attack on free speech by both parties'

Twitter’s decision to fact-check President Trump’s tweet suggesting mail-in ballots are subject to voter fraud, indicates Twitter wants to be a “player” in the 2020 United States election, according to Daily Telegraph columnist Miranda Devine.

Donald Trump has threatened to “strongly regulate or close down” social media platforms after Twitter placed a warning label below one of the president’s tweets concerning mail-in balloting.

However, Twitter have defended their warning label, saying “these Tweets contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labelled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots”.

Ms Devine said the mail-fraud issue was “a strange hill for Twitter to choose to die on” particularly given the “ample evidence that in fact voter fraud with mail-in ballots happens all the time”.

If Twitter were truly concerned about fact-checking, “there are less political tweets they could have taken issue with” in Donald Trump’s Twitter stream.

Sky News host Chris Kenny said while “the idea that Twitter was going to be some sort of objective arbiter of truth and reality… was laughable,” he was equally concerned about President Trump’s threat to impose an executive order on Twitter in a bid to “control them or shut them down”.

“We’ve got free speech being attacked from both sides here,” he said.