WaPo Created Plug-in To Instantly Fact-Check Trumps Twitter
Donald Trump’s days of Tweeting misinformation unchecked are over. The Washington Post just did what should have been done years ago—add an automatic fact-checker to Trump’s Twitter.
The plug in was developed for the Google Chrome browser and was released by Philip Bump, who is a reporter at WaPo. Directly under Trump’s statements on Twitter, there is a gray box that simply declares, “This is incorrect or false,” with a sentence explaining why and a link. The fact-checking extension goes back to tweets from November and will be a beacon of truth in processing all of Trump’s misleading tweets in the future. A statement from WaPo declared the following, “our goal is to provide additional context where needed for Trump’s tweets moving forward (and a few golden oldies).”
As one of Trump’s most hated media outlets, Trump and WaPo have come to blows in the past. However, this is not a counter-move from the newspaper. Bump wrote on Twitter that he had just come up with the idea for the extension, “this morning.” Trump has called the media outlet, “phony and dishonest,” as well as having, “incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting.” Trump even took away WaPo’s press credentials, as a way to hugely damage the paper. But now it seems WaPo will have the last laugh—through the plugin they will be able to invalidate all of Trump’s ramblings as exactly that; valueless rants of a narcissist that are ungrounded in reality. Perhaps the most brilliant part of this is that the plugin will take down Trump through Twitter, which he has grown so attached to. It is his way to self-publish without any checks or review, but WaPo has put a stop to that. Trump will now have to be accountable for the tweets he shares in the middle of the night (doubtful) or be called out on his lies, literally right underneath them.
http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/12/17/washington-post-just-created-plug-instantly-fact-check-trumps-twitter/
