Twitter Is Settling In for Two Nights of Democratic Presidential Candidate Debates

Twitter is doing its part to ensure that its users are ready for the first two debates featuring Democratic presidential candidates, Wednesday and Thursday nights, and to protect its platform from manipulation related to those debates. The debates will air Wednesday and Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo, with 10 different candidates participating each night. They will also be livestreamed on Twitter, in English and Spanish, on @NBCNews and @TelemundoNews. Carlos Monje Jr., Twitter’s director of public policy and philanthropy for the U.S. and Canada, said in a blog post that #DemDebate is the official hashtag for the debates, and tapping it anywhere within the social network will bring up the livestreams. Twitter users can also go to the #DemDebate event page and click a set reminder button in order to receive alerts when each night’s debate begins. Insights and information about how conversation about the debates is unfolding on Twitter will be shared by @TwitterGov, including most-tweeted about moments, on-stage candidates and overall U.S. politicians. As far as keeping Twitter and its users safe during campaign season, Monje said the social network’s public policy team has met and trained 20 presidential campaign teams on account security, best practices, advertising policies and reporting procedures, as well as the Democratic National Committee, the Republican National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He added that Twitter is maintaining open lines of communication with the Department of Homeland Security, state elections directors and the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force. On the topic of political ads, he wrote, “It’s very likely that you will see promoted tweets containing political or election-related content on Twitter during debates. Twitter’s policies require that accounts running these kinds of advertisements become certified as political campaigning or issue advertisers, which requires that their promoted tweets contain more explicit identification, and that they consent to increased transparency on their advertising campaigns’ targeting and spend data. We believe this transparency is vital, and we continue to support the Honest Ads Act." Monje added that all data on political campaigning and issue advertising is available to the public via the social network’s Ads Transparency Center. He concluded, “Our efforts to foster healthy, meaningful conversations on Twitter during the entirety of the U.S. presidential election are ongoing, and we will continue to update the public via @Policy, @TwitterSafety and @TwitterGov.”