Twitter Marks Trump Campaign Video As 'Manipulated Media' In One Of The First Enforcements Of Updated Policy

Twitter Inc. TWTR on Sunday marked a video retweeted by President Donald Trump as "manipulated media," in one of the first such enforcements under its updated policy.

What Happened

The White House Director of Social Media Dan Scavino had posted the video where Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden can be heard saying, "We can only re-elect Donald Trump."

I agree with Joe! https://t.co/h84mD7jVPW

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2020

The video was from Biden's speech in Kansas City, Missouri, as reported by the Washington Post, cut out in a way to make it seem that the rival candidate for the U.S. presidency was endorsing Trump. "We can only reelect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It's gotta be a positive campaign," Biden had said at the rally, per the Post.

Twitter updated its policy in February this year on any instance of manipulated or synthetic media on its platform. A draft version of the policy was proposed in November last year.

Depending on the severity of the altered media, Twitter could either just label the tweet as "manipulated media" for users to see, or in extreme cases, remove the content. Scavino's tweet was only labeled for some users, as noted by the Post, meaning Twitter didn't rule the content to "likely impact public safety or cause serious harm."

Why It Matters

This isn't the first time that a Trump campaign ad has run afoul with the internet media giants. Last week, Facebook Inc. FB took down an ad posted by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee for misleading users about the official 2020 census of the United States. Alphabet Inc. GOOGL GOOG subsidiaries Google and YouTube removed more than 300 of Trump campaign ads over the summer last year, as reported by CBS 60 minutes at the time.

Price Action

Twitter's shares closed 4.32% lower at $33.46 on Friday and edged another 0.63% lower at $33.25 in the after-hours session.