Twitter flags Biden video retweeted by Trump as ‘manipulated media’
For apparently the first time, Twitter Inc. has flagged a post retweeted by President Donald Trump as “manipulated media.”
The tweet came from Dan Scavino, the White House’s social media director, who posted an edited video of former Vice President Joe Biden saying: “We can only re-elect Donald Trump.”
But the actual, unedited quote, which came from a Biden speech in Kansas City, Mo., on Saturday, was: “We can only reelect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here.”
The Washington Post first reported Twitter’s action.
As of 8:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, the tweet, which was originally posted by Scavino on Saturday evening, had been viewed 5.2 million times.
On Friday, Twitter TWTR, 3.825% updated its manipulated-media policy. “You may not deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm,” the company said in a blog post. “In addition, we may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context.”
Last month, Twitter vowed a new effort to crack down on photos, videos and audio that are designed to mislead people. At the time, Twitter said it could remove posts that caused harm, while posts that misled but did not cause harm would just be given a warning label.
However, as of Sunday night, the “manipulated media” tag was only visible to Twitter users on their timelines — searching for the offending tweet brought it up without the warning label. Twitter was reportedly working to fix that glitch.