Twitter is now allowing users to report false or misleading information in tweets about voting in this year's election.
The new feature announced Wednesday allows users to flag a tweet that contains misinformation about an election in the same way one might report abusive language — by clicking "Report Tweet."
It's the latest attempt by social media companies to position themselves as a force for good in safeguarding the 2020 campaign against online efforts to suppress the vote or otherwise shape voter behavior through disinformation. For the past four years, the industry has been roundly derided for doing too little before the 2016 election to prevent its platforms from being exploited by Russians and others bent on destabilizing democracy.
The Twitter tool, while brand new to the United States, was available overseas last year ahead of elections in the European Union, Britain and India.
After finding a suspicious tweet, the user is prompted to select whether the tweet contains false information about where or how to register to vote or cast a ballot, has language intended to suppress or intimidate voters, or misrepresents an affiliation with or impersonates a "candidate, elected official, political party, or government entity."
Tweets designed to manipulate or interfere with the election process already violate Twitter's terms of use. Reports submitted through the new tool will be reviewed to see if the suspected tweets violate those rules.
The company's announcement came the same day Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts announced her plan crack down on online misinformation if elected president.
But the timing of Twitter's rollout and Warren's post is likely coincidental. In April 2019, the company said it intended to offer a misinformation reporting tool ahead of elections overseas and planned to expand the tool to cover "other elections globally throughout the rest of the year."
Twitter reiterated that commitment in a tweet Wednesday. "This tool has been an important aspect of our efforts to protect the health of the Twitter conversation for elections around the globe, including in India, the UK, and across the EU," it said.
The social media platforms have come under heightened governmental scrutiny in recent months. In the fall the Senate Intelligence Committee's comprehensive report on interference in the 2016 election criticized the companies for helping spread disinformation.
Facebook is now banning posts with information designed to mislead or deceive prospective voters — and it too gives users an option to report "incorrect voting info" on a post. YouTube similarly allow users can report election-related misinformation using its system for calling out inappropriate content.
Twitter said in October it was imposing a worldwide ban on political advertising, a move that did not go over well with campaigns in both parties and was criticized as an ultimately insufficient response to the rising wave of political misinformation.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.