One of the big questions going into election night is whether former president Donald Trump will prematurely declare victory. That declaration would likely be accompanied by social media posts on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok—none of which will say whether they would remove the content.
He’s done it before: Trump falsely declared himself the winner of the 2020 election when many battleground states were still too close to call. Counts were still ongoing in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. A number of Republican lawmakers and pundits rebuked Trump’s claims. Ben Shapiro, cofounder of the Daily Wire, said “No, Trump has not already won the election, and it is deeply irresponsible for him to say that he has,” in an X post at the time. Trump’s own advisers are reportedly encouraging him to announce an early victory.
“Premature claims of victory that are intended to intimidate people from voting or suppress voting may be evaluated under our Civic Integrity policy,” X spokesperson Michael Abboud tells WIRED. “Community Notes are an effective way to add helpful context to Posts that may be misleading about voting results.”
X authorizes users to flag and correct misinformation on its platforms through Community Notes. A recent Center for Countering Digital Hate study found that the crowdsourced fact-checking initiative does a poor job of correcting false election claims.
X, which is owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has already become a hotbed for election misinformation, and that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon. Last week, Musk’s America PAC launched an Election Integrity Community on X, which has grown to nearly 50,000 members. The group says it will elevate “incidents of voter fraud or irregularities you see while voting in the 2024 election.
In 2020, Meta said that it would add labels to early victory posts. This time around, Corey Chambliss, a Meta spokesperson, shared a blog post with WIRED explaining that the company will remove misinformation related to the dates, locations, times, and methods of voting and voting-related calls for violence. Meta will also remove content containing false election results, according to the blog post, but Chambliss did not respond to whether that rule applied to Trump.
“As with all of our policies, we will continue to monitor what we’re seeing on-platform,” Chambliss told WIRED on Tuesday.
Ads declaring a false outcome, however, are banned. Meta bans new election ads for the week before election day, and said it would extend that ban up until a few days after polls close, Axios reported on Monday.
Political ads are completely banned on TikTok, but that hasn’t stopped influencers from posting election-related sponsored content this cycle. Unlike 2020, the Trump campaign now has its own TikTok account where it could post content claiming the former president has won before the final ballots are processed. The platform’s content policy bars election-related content “that may result in voter interference, disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, or lead to off-platform violence,” but the company did not respond to requests for comment asking if this would apply to any videos Trump could make prematurely declaring victory. TikTok does forbid users from claiming Trump won in 2020.
YouTube bars users from misleading voters about the date and location of the election and posting content that questions a candidate’s eligibility or encourages interference in democratic processes.
“Our policies apply to everyone and are enforced with consistency, regardless of the political viewpoints expressed, the language the content is in, or how the content is generated,” YouTube says in a policy explainer.
Earlier this week, Twitch introduced a new label for creators to tag their streams if they primarily discuss topics like “elections, civic integrity, and war or military conflict.” In response to January 6, Twitch banned Trump from the platform. The account was reinstated in July shortly after Trump officially became the Republicans’ presidential nominee.
“We believe there is value in hearing from presidential nominees directly, when possible. Trump is now the official Republican nominee for US president,” a Twitch spokesperson said at the time.
YouTube and Twitch did not respond to a request for comment on whether they would remove posts from Trump prematurely claiming victory.
Vittoria Elliott contributed reporting.
You can follow all of WIRED’s 2024 presidential election coverage here.
