Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

Of all the things Trump has said, why add a fact check on this point that includes all kinds of vagueness?

How is it a fact that mail-in ballots will not lead to rigged elections? Just that there's no evidence to support it doesn't mean it can't be true (however unlikely). If we're really to police politicians, surely it should be only on absolutely logically false points?

The point about that only registered votes will receive ballots and not just anyone might be a real correction, but it sort of depends on who can be a registered voter, I don't know the details of that. It also seems like a relatively minor point.

And the third correction is just horrendous. Trump targeted California, and they add a "get the facts" that other states also exist. How is that categorically relevant? Obviously Trump is concerned with leftwing influence, so he's singling California out, it's most certainly valid.

So Twitter releases what's possibly the most culturally significant feature they've released in 10 years, and they fuck up 2 out of 3, and the only one they might have gotten right has not enough information and seems to be minor?

To me it seems there's only 2 rational explanations: whoever made the check the facts did so without oversight or involvement of a committee, and will be fired, or Twitter simply does not want to actually do this, and tries to get out of the public pressure to do so by making a weak attempt and then giving up. I hate to be cynical, but the first one option just doesn't seem very likely given the gravity of the situation.

edit: if I was the CEO of Twitter and I would have given the final 'go' on the "what you need to know" it would have looked like this:

- In the state of California only registered voters receive ballots.

So: no hear-say about evidence that is missing, no accusing a politician of lies and definitely not naming that politician in every line. Just the facts, and let the reader figure out how that reflects on the tweet the politician made.

> Just that there's no evidence to support it doesn't mean it can't be true (however unlikely).

That's the thing. If there is no evidence to support it, it cannot be asserted as an unequivocally true statement. Trump doesn't claim that it "might" be true, or he "believes" it to be true, he says, effectively, "this is the unarguable truth". And Twitter says "not so fast".

But the whole idea of democracy is that we elect politicians based on their beliefs and ideals. We pick either conservative or progressive, not based on any evidence of their efficacy but on our feelings about those views. And the idea is then that the aggregate of those feelings (especially over time) leads to a prosperous and stable nation.

Maybe I have to yield this point, and say that Twitter should also call out politicians on making baseless statements. (Which will be all of the time because twitter doesn't have a very neat way of including footnotes, and politicians are not known to publish tweets as academic papers) but even then the commentary should be something like:

- the trump administration has not published evidence to support the statement that mail-in ballots lead to rigged elections.

Which is very different from just saying it's a false claim in my opinion.