Twitter marks a Trump tweet 'manipulated media' for the first time
This time, for posting a 'fake news' clip with a CNN label applied to it.
In a move that may spur another round of yelling about censorship and Section 230 from the White House, a tweet by Donald Trump has received a special marker — not one of those special markers — from Twitter. In this case, the shoddily-manipulated video clip aims to turn people against “fake news” by creating a fake CNN video about a supposedly racist baby. CNN responded by pointing out that it actually used the real footage to cover a story accurately while imploring the president to “be better” than tweeting fake videos that exploit children.
According to a Twitter spokesperson, “This Tweet has been labeled per our synthetic and manipulated media policy to give people more context.” The “manipulated media” marker appears below the tweet, but doesn’t prevent retweets or shares, and it links to the company’s policies. This is the fourth time Twitter has applied one of its warnings to a tweet by the president, but the first time it’s used this particular one.
Meanwhile the CDC noted that as of today there have been more than 117,000 deaths reported due to COVID-19 in the US.
Update (6/19): Twitter and Facebook have both removed the clip from their platforms after the owner of the original video issued a copyright complaint over its misuse.
