Last updated on January 9th, 2023 at 07:04 am
Elon Musk’s Twitter has flagged one of the president’s tweets ahead of this week’s mid-term elections.
The price if gas is one of the critical issues in the election, and both parties have been trying to blame each other for high prices.
The problem is global as the war in Ukraine has led to an increase in gas prices worldwide.
The tweet that was flagged said “Right now, the most common price at gas stations across the country is $3.19 per gallon. That’s progress.”
The tweet was flagged because he used the word “common price” instead of average price. This was done so users don’t confuse that with the average price which is higher than $3.19 per gallon.
The average price of gas in the United States is @$3.80 per gallon. This is because different states have different gas prices.
In California the average price of gas is $5.50 per gallon while in Wyoming its at $3.70 a gallon.
It would be convenient for a president to use the “common price” because its lower than the average price especially a few days to the mid-terms.
Twitter flagged the tweet by using the platform’s context feature which gives readers context that they thought people might want to know.
The context feature doesn’t mean the president was wrong or was trying to mislead readers, it is used as a tool to provide users with more information.
As of now the context feature has been removed from this tweet and it is no longer flagged.
This however isn’t the first time this has happened to the president.
Last week Joe Biden’s tweet received another “context” feature on a tweet about the number of big corporations not paying taxes.
The tweet that was flagged said “Let me give you the facts. In 2020, 55 corporations made $40 billion. And they paid zero in federal taxes. My Inflation Reduction Act puts an end to this.”
The context feature that was added to that tweet indicated that Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act imposed a minimum tax on corporations with average pre-tax earnings greater than $1 billion.
The feature went on to add that out of the 55 corporations that the tweet references, only 14 had earnings greater than $1 billion and would be eligible under Biden’s tax law.
The November 8th Mid-terms are tomorrow and people are already going to the polls.
Twitter’s actions might have come too late as the elections are just a day away, and it’s unlikely that they will have much impact.
The platform has been criticized for how it handles political content and the fact that it doesn’t seem to be impartial.
In the past, Twitter has been accused of censoring conservatives and their content.
The platform has also been slow to remove fake accounts and bots, which has led to the spread of misinformation.
Twitter has been trying to combat these issues by making changes to its algorithm and adding features like the context feature.
Only time will tell if these changes are enough to improve the platform’s reputation.
