Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have removed a Trump campaign video from their respective platforms. The 4-minute video included images of George Floyd and protesters.
The late Floyd of Minneapolis died on May 25th after a police officer kneeled on his neck for more than 8 minutes. Four officers were fired, including one who ignored Floyd’s pleas that he couldn’t breathe.
The encounter started when police detained him on Monday evening. It was on suspicion of trying to pass a fake $20 bill at a convenience store. He died at Hennepin County Medical Center soon after.
The video of this incident has prompted nationwide protests against police violence but these companies removed it after receiving copyright complaints.
Twitter disabled the video, as Facebook and Instagram removed posts that contained it. President Trump called it illegal as he objected to the removal in a tweet, calling it illegal.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded that it was not true and not illegal. They pulled it because they received a DMCA complaint from a copyright holder.
A Facebook spokesperson said the company, which owns Instagram, also received a copyright complaint under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The spokesperson said organizations that use original art found on Instagram should have the right to do so.
YouTube didn’t remove a version of the video from its platform. It’s saying it did not contain the content that violated the copyright. As of Saturday morning, its version of the video had nearly half a million views.
Trump Threatens Social Media Sites, Twitter, FB, Instagram
President Donald Trump has constantly threatened tech companies with huge consequences and not following through. That includes social media sites, which he both uses but relentlessly berates for an alleged ‘anti-Trump bias’.
He has issued an executive order governing how websites can moderate content.
The order followed Trump’s feud with Twitter after it fact-checked one of his tweets. It has been brewing since at least last year when there was hearsay surrounding a rule around social media bias. This could be his censorship bill that potentially covers almost any part of the web.
It was not clear who filed the copyright complaint about the video, titled Healing Not Hatred. It also had President Trump’s speech where he says the “death of George Floyd was a grave tragedy.”
Twitter has applied labels to two of President Trump’s tweets last month. One used the phrase when the looting starts, the shooting starts, which glorifies violence. There’s another one for being potentially misleading about mail-in voting.
Twitter has placed a public interest notice on this tweet for breaking the platform’s rules about the glorification of violence.
However, Twitter has not chosen to get rid of the tweet from its platform entirely. This is because it believes it to be in the public interest. It announced the notice in a tweet thread from its official comms account.
The notice means that the tweet is hidden from Trump’s timeline, but is accessible by clicking the view button. As part of the process, the reach of the tweet will also be limited.
Users can still retweet it with a comment but cannot reply to it, retweet it directly, or like it. Moreover, it also says that its notice means that the tweet won’t be algorithmically recommended on its platform.
COMMENTS