Hawley: Twitter's decision to not label Iranian email posts 'facilitates election interference'

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Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Thursday said Twitter's apparent decision to not censor tweets showing screenshots of Iranian disinformation "facilitates election interference." 

Twitter has not provided any additional context to tweets showing screenshots of the voter intimidation emails sent to Democrats in battleground states that were part of an Iranian influence campaign, according to the FBI's Wednesday findings.

"Yet again, Twitter has applied entirely different standards based on whether posts would help or harm Democratic candidates," Hawley, a staunch critic of Big Tech, said in a statement to Fox News. "Here, Twitter’s anti-conservative bias directly facilitates election interference by foreign adversaries. I look forward to probing these issues with Jack Dorsey."

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) speaks at a Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee hearing on June 10, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Al-Drago-Pool/Getty Images)

A Twitter spokesperson said it is investigating certain accounts and tweets after Fox News asked why the company was not labeling screenshots of the emails but added that the attempt to manipulate voters "did not gain traction on Twitter."

"Through close collaboration with industry peers and the law enforcement [sic], we acted quickly to proactively and permanently suspend a small number of accounts and limit the sharing of media specific to this coordinated campaign," the spokesperson said. "This attempt to manipulate American voters did not gain traction on Twitter. As Election Day approaches, we remain vigilant and are working to ensure our service is protected from both foreign and domestic attempts to undermine the public conversation."

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Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday connected an Iranian influence campaign to a flurry of voter intimidation emails sent to voters in Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona. The emails falsely claimed to be from the far-right "Proud Boys" group, which the Proud Boys chairman denied, according to The Washington Post, and the FBI's findings supported his statement.

On Twitter, however, users are sharing screenshots of at least one Iranian intimidation email without the context that it was part of a foreign influence campaign. 

The website also adds fact-check labels to posts it deems misleading and has added such labels to a number of President Trump's tweets about COVID-19 and mail-in ballot fraud.

"If we determine a Tweet contains misleading or disputed information that could lead to harm, we may add a label to the content to provide context," a page on Twitter's Help Center reads.

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Twitter announced in an Oct. 9 blog post that it may mark certain tweets with a "misleading information" label that reads, "This is disputed," before users retweet content, but Twitter has not labeled the Iranian emails in question.

"We have also taken action on Tweets sharing media regarding elections and political issues with misleading or incorrect party affiliation information. We continue to partner closely with the RNC, DNC, and state election institutions to improve how we handle these issues," the blog post reads.

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It continues: "Twitter has a critical role to play in protecting the integrity of the election conversation, and we encourage candidates, campaigns, news outlets and voters to use Twitter respectfully and to recognize our collective responsibility to the electorate to guarantee a safe, fair and legitimate democratic process this November."

Twitter's policies say the website protects users against "intentionally misleading election-related content," according to a 2018 blog post announcing updates to the platform's elections integrity work.

Hawley condemned the social media website last week after it decided to block users from sharing a New York Post article about 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and his purported communication with an adviser to Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings LLC. Twitter said the post violated its Hacked Materials Policy.

This post has been updated to include Twitter's statement.