Twitter has finally started fact-checking Trump

After the president tweeted misleading information about mail-in ballots, Twitter applied a warning label to Trump’s tweets for the first time.

For the first time ever, Twitter has fact-checked President Trump’s tweets.

Until now, Twitter hasn’t taken any action against Trump’s account or tweets even when he has flouted the social media platform’s rules by posting false, harmful, or misleading content. Twitter’s rationale for letting Trump post these kinds of tweets has been that because he is a world leader, his posts are considered newsworthy and are therefore an exception to its policies. But after years of criticism about that stance, on Tuesday, the company added fact-check labels on two of Trump’s recent tweets that shared misleading information about voting by mail.

On Tuesday afternoon, Twitter placed labels underneath Trump’s tweets claiming that mail-in voting ballots in the 2020 presidential race will be “anything less than substantially fraudulent” and lead to a “Rigged Election.” If you click the labels, they take you to a fact-checking page that calls out the president’s false statement.

While Twitter’s move will be welcomed by those who have long called for Twitter to start applying its policy rules to the president’s account, it’s also sure to set off conservative critics, who argue that by labeling the president, Twitter is limiting freedom of speech on the platform and reflecting a purported — but unsubstantiated — anti-conservative bias.

Here’s what the labels look like.