Twitter gives the first label for ‘manipulated media’ to Trump’s retweet
Twitter has, for the first time, labeled a tweet as manipulated media. The label was for a misleading video showing Democrat Joe Biden. In that video, it seemed as if Trump’s opposing candidate Biden was calling for the re-election of the president, but an essential part of the message had been cut out of the clip.
The video that Trump shared twice with his 73 million followers originally came from the White House social media director, Dan Scavino. Users who now come across the tweet will receive a message from Twitter stating that it concerns significantly modified or “manipulated media”.
In the video, Biden seems to say during a campaign speech, “We can only re-elect Trump”. But actually, his full sentence was: “We can only re-elect Trump if we keep attacking each other. This has to be a positive campaign.” After Scavino posted the footage, President Trump shared the tweet with a caption: “I agree with Joe!”
“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,” Cat Zakrzewski twitted.
New rules
It is the first time that Twitter uses such a tag to warn users. In February, the company announced it would banish misleading fake news from the platform. Then it said it would remove or label fabricated images, videos, and other media that pose significant security risks.
These dangerous tweets include, according to the new rules, images that have been shortened or whose order or composition has been edited. But also when vital information has been omitted with the intention of deceiving others. That was now the case.
