Twitter have accused the Conservative Party of misleading the public after they changed their press office twitter account name from CCHQ press to factcheckUK. The party also changed their logo to hide their political affiliation, although their handle remained the same.
The change was made during the ITV leaders debate, which saw Boris Johnson debate Jeremy Corbyn for the first time.
The move was swiftly criticised by Full Fact, a not for profit fact checking service, who complained it was ‘inappropriate and misleading’.
Twitter have responded to the complaint by warning,
“Any further attempts to mislead people by editing verified profile information – in a manner seen during the UK Election Debate – will result in decisive corrective action,”.
The controversial decision was taken as Mr. Johnson provoked laughter from the debate audience when he was asked if the truth mattered during the election.
The Prime Minister has a history of issuing misleading statements, and a YouGov poll conducted immediately after the debate found more people trusted Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
However, the Conservative Party Chairman, James Cleverly, denied the party had deliberately misled the public, claiming the decision would have been taken by someone in their digital team.
He told the BBC’s Newsnight,
“The Twitter handle of the CCHQ press office remained @CCHQPress so it’s clear the nature of the site.
“The reason we did that is because we were calling out the inaccuracies, the lies that were coming out during the debate. The NHS is not for sale.”
Twitter announced at the end of October that they would no longer be running any political ads on their platform to cut down on false information during elections.
Featured Image: The Scottish Sun
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