Twitter adds way to report voter-tricking tweets
San Francisco: Twitter on Wednesday began making it easier to report tweets aimed at interfering with people voting, starting first in Europe and India.
An option to report Twitter messages as being misleading about voting was being added to the one-to-many messaging service's app in India and Europe, with a promise it would be expanded globally through the year.
"Any attempts to undermine the process of registering to vote or engaging in the electoral process is contrary to our company's core values," the Twitter safety team said in an online post.
"We are further expanding our enforcement capabilities in this area by creating a dedicated reporting feature within the product to allow users to more easily report this content to us."
Twitter teams entrusted to review reported content have been trained as part of an enhanced appeals process in the event tweet removal decisions are challenged, according to the San Francisco-based company.
"You may not use Twitter's services for the purpose of manipulating or interfering in elections," the safety team said.
Examples of misleading information fired off in tweets included falsely asserting people could vote by email, phone, text messages or even using Twitter messages.
Tweets have also been used to trick people into going to the polls on the wrong days or times, missing opportunities to cast ballots.
Twitter and other online social media services have been under pressure to prevent their platforms from being used to spread falsehoods aimed at influencing voting, as appeared to be the case in the US presidential election in 2016.
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Surat LS candidate Nilesh Kumbhani whose nomination form was rejected suspended from Congress
Ahmedabad, Apr 25: The Gujarat Congress on Friday suspended from the party for six years its Surat Lok Sabha candidate Nilesh Kumbhani, whose nomination form was rejected over discrepancies leading to the BJP's Mukesh Dalal getting elected unopposed.
A statement from the Congress said the party's disciplinary committee decided to suspend Kumbhani after thorough discussion, adding it had come to the conclusion that the nomination form was rejected due to gross negligence on his part or "in connivance with the BJP".
"To be fair to you we have given time to you to explain your case but instead of coming before the party disciplinary committee you have gone incommunicado. After your form was rejected by the authorities, BJP went ahead and got form of other eight candidates withdrawn. This has deprived people of Surat their voting rights," the Congress disciplinary committee headed by Balu Patel said.
"People of Surat and party workers have become very angry due to your action and are expressing their anger in different ways. The Congress party has decided to suspend you for six years from the party," the press note said.
Kumbhani's nomination form was rejected on April 21 after his three proposers submitted affidavits to the district returning officer claiming the signatures on the document was not theirs.
The nomination form of Suresh Padsala, the Congress' substitute candidate from Surat, was also invalidated on the same grounds.
In his order, Returning Officer Sourabh Pardhi said the three nomination forms submitted by Kumbhani and Padsala were rejected after prima facie discrepancy was found in the signatures of the proposers and they did not appear to be genuine.
Kumbhani, a former corporator from Surat, had unsuccessfully fought the 2022 Assembly polls from Kamrej there.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's Mukesh Dalal was elected unopposed from Surat Lok Sabha constituency on April 22 after all other nominees, including one from BSP, withdrew from the fray one by one on the last day of withdrawing papers.
