Twitter flags ballot conspiracy theory shared by Trump – after it is shared widely

Video baselessly questioning the collection of valid ballots is retweeted more than 70,000 times

Twitter took more than an hour to flag a highly misleading video shared by Donald Trump, which baselessly pushed claims of ballot fraud and was retweeted more than 70,000 times before the platform took action.

The president, who lost the US election to Joe Biden last week, shared a video of election workers in Los Angeles collecting valid, mail-in ballots that were posted on or before election day from a ballot drop box. The video, which has been shared thousands of times in recent days, falsely suggested something unusual was under way and has been repeatedly debunked. The Los Angeles county registrar confirmed that the ballots were collected on 4 November from a box that was locked at 8pm on election day and were later processed and counted.