Social media platform Twitter labeled a video recently shared by President Donald Trump with its “manipulated media” tag, which is meant to describe media that has been “significantly and deceptively altered or fabricated.”
TechCrunch reports that a video recently shared by President Trump was labeled with a “manipulated media” tag by Twitter. The label, which was announced as part of a new policy last month, is designed to apply to media that has been “significantly and deceptively altered or fabricated.”
The video retweeted by the president was originally posted by the White House director of social media Dan Scavino. The video used footage taken during a speech by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in which the former vice president fumbled his words and stated “Excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump,” before pausing and adding “if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It’s gotta be a positive campaign.”
Sleepy Joe💤in St. Louis, Missouri today:
“We can only re-elect @realDonaldTrump.”#KAG2020LandslideVictory🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/FT4q2MWfcD
— Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) March 8, 2020
Just in: Twitter applied its new manipulated media label for the first time to a deceptively edited video of Joe Biden. It was shared by White House social media director Dan Scavino, and retweeted by the president. pic.twitter.com/PggcCwMNkx
— Cat Zakrzewski (@Cat_Zakrzewski) March 8, 2020
Ok so this video wasn’t “manipulated” like Twitter claimed, but it was selectively cropped which leaves out the context. I don’t like that. Yes, Biden still stumbles & had a brain smoke down. But since I tweeted the original (without context), here’s the full context. pic.twitter.com/o7jK7zl9U7
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) March 9, 2020
The video shared by Scavino only includes Biden stating: “Excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump.” Twitter’s manipulated media label began to appear on the video of Biden to some users on Sunday evening. Twitter says that it examines video metadata, the context of the tweets, and the Twitter user’s public information to determine how it labels videos as “misleading.” The platform has not stated how decided to apply the label to the clip, which does not change Biden’s words although it does remove them from context, as “significantly and deceptively altered or fabricated.”
Twitter’s new policy is a response to years of criticism that the site has faced for failing to prevent harassment and “toxicity” on its platform. Twitter has previously also faced calls from Democrats to remove President Trump entirely from its platform, a move that Twitter has refused to make. Twitter has stated that it believes preserving tweets from public officials is important in order to foster debate on the platform.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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