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Twitter will label election candidates with new badges on their profiles

Twitter will label election candidates with new badges on their profiles

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Twitter has announced that it’ll apply a new label to US election candidates’ profiles. The badge will also show up below a candidate’s name on tweets in users’ timelines. For now, the labels will only apply to accounts of candidates running for state governor, the US Senate, or the US House of Representatives during the 2018 midterm election.

The company says it’s partnering with nonprofit Ballotpedia to identify candidates’ accounts once they’ve qualified for the general election ballot. These labels will start showing up on May 30th for candidates who have qualified for the ballot and have given Twitter consent to apply the badge.

Twitter

The world is watching how all the social platforms handle this year’s US midterm elections as they’re the first to follow the 2016 election in which fake news and bots flooded networks, possibly swaying results. Twitter said it exposed nearly 700,000 people to Russian propaganda during that US election and said it was working on its automated detection technology to delete bots. It also banned bulk tweeting and duplicate accounts in an effort to crack down on bots.