Everyone is applauding this because they hate Trump, but take a step back and see the bigger picture. This could backfire in serious ways, and it plays to Trump's base's narrative that the mainstream media and tech giants are colluding to silence conservatives (and maybe there could even be some truth to that.) I know the Valley is an echo chamber, so obviously no one is going to ever realize this.
It can’t be all perfectly achieved, but to do nothing, as they were before, could be now determined to be a worse case than providing these annotations to flagrant misuse by the highest impact profile that they can’t do away with entirely.
So what?
There’s no law prohibiting these types of businesses from supporting a political candidate. They could plaster a huge “Vote For X” banner at the top of every person’s profile. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.
It’s not like Twitter is tax-exempt which would prohibit it from endorsing candidates like Churches.
Twitter is not tax-exempt but is certainly lawsuit-exempt to a large degree. The entire reason twitter has not be sued into oblivion for the actions of it's users is because of the protections Section 230[1] grants them.
But here is the pinch. Section 230 protection applies only as long as you act as platforms for 3rd party speech. But when they start plastering "Vote for X" banners on their websites of their own violations, they go from being platforms for 3rd party speech to 1st party publishers. That effectively removes the Section 230 protections twitter enjoys.
I much as I hate to say it, Trump might be right this once. Twitter has stopped being a neutral platform enforcing consistent policies for quite some time now.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...