Twitter flagged one of President Donald Trump’s recent tweets, categorizing it as manipulated media.
On Thursday evening, the president tweeted a video of two toddlers — one black and the other white. The chyron at the bottom of the clip contained what appears to be a manipulated caption that read, “Terrified todler [sic] runs from racist baby.”
The video — which also included CNN’s logo in the bottom-right corner of the screen — later reverts to the original viral video which shows the two children embracing each other. The caption is then changed to read, “America is not the problem. Fake news is.”
See Trump’s tweet below:
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020
A Twitter spokesperson confirmed to The Hill why the tweet had been tagged, saying, “This tweet has been labeled per our synthetic and manipulated media policy to give people more context.”
Shortly after Trump’s tweet, CNN also responded.
The news network confirmed it did cover the story. However, the network noted that their report aligned with the original video without anything being altered.
CNN did cover this story – exactly as it happened. Just as we reported your positions on race (and poll numbers). We’ll continue working with facts rather than tweeting fake videos that exploit innocent children. We invite you to do the same. Be better. https://t.co/T1nBtejZta
— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) June 19, 2020
The president’s latest flagged tweet follows multiple flags for previous posts and Facebook’s decision to remove his political advertisement released this week.
The Facebook ad included a triangular symbol previously used by the Nazis to categorize its political captives that had been imprisoned in concentration camps, as IJR reported.
The red triangle, displayed in multiple paid posts sponsored by Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, was used in an ad targeting Antifa and “far-left groups.” A total of 88 ads including the Nazi-inspired triangle were ran on official pages for Trump, Pence, and “Team Trump” on Facebook.
See the ad below:
Following the removal of the ad, Facebook representatives addressed the situation, explaining why the ad was not suitable for the social network.
“Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol,” said Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman.
Nathaniel Gleicher, the head of security policy for Facebook, was also questioned by Republican lawmakers over the removal of the ads. He explained why they were problematic.
“We obviously want to be careful to allow someone to put up a symbol to condemn it or to discuss it,” Gleicher said during Thursday’s House Intelligence Committee hearing. “But in a situation where we don’t see either of those, we don’t allow it on the platform and we’ll remove it. That’s what we saw in this case with this ad, and anywhere that symbol is used, we would take the same action.”
