Last October, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube all took heat for refusing to remove a political ad from the Donald Trump re-election campaign that pushed the false Joe Biden/Ukraine conspiracy theory. Representatives from Twitter and YouTube said the ad didn’t violate their marketing policies, and Facebook issued a statement saying politicians’ ads are exempt from its fact-checking policies.
Following that incident, Twitter added a new “synthetic and manipulated media” policy. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doubled down on his platform’s stance, but at the same time, laid out Facebook’s plan for preserving election security–which included expanded use of third-party fact-checkers to “prominently label” election-related videos and photos containing false info.
Now, Trump has run afoul of both platforms, and both have taken action.
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On Sunday, Dan Scavino, the White House’s director of social media, tweeted an edited video clip of former Obama vice president and current Democratic candidate Biden speaking to voters in St. Louis.
In the Trump administration’s version of the clip, Biden supposedly tells Democrats, “We cannot win this re-election. Excuse me, we can only re-elect Donald Trump.” But Biden’s actual quote, per Variety, is, “Excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It’s got to be a positive campaign, so join us.”
Trump retweeted the video, and it was reportedly viewed more than 6 million times. Scavino appears to have since deleted the tweet, but before he did, Twitter slapped it with a label officially deeming it “manipulated media.” Such labels overlay videos/photos and must be clicked through by viewers who want to see the content.
This is the first time Twitter has applied a manipulated media label to a Trump campaign tweet.
Scavino protested Twitter’s decision in another tweet:
The video was NOT manipulated. https://t.co/p9QrNPYOvf
— Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) March 9, 2020
Facebook, however, agrees that it was manipulated. After Twitter took action, Biden’s campaign manager Greg Schultz targeted Facebook, where Trump had posted the video to his page and captioned it, “I agree with Joe!”
Schultz accused Facebook of caring “first and foremost about money, and, to that end, [is] willing to serve as one of the world’s most effective mediums for the spread of vile lies,” per Variety.
Facebook responded by adding a warning label to the video that says it includes “partly false information.” In a statement, the company explained, “Fact checkers rated this video as partly false, so we are reducing its distribution and showing warning labels with more context for people who see it, try to share it, or already have.”
Like Twitter’s label, Facebook’s must be clicked through if a viewer wants to watch the video.
Facebook’s actions might seem at odds with its earlier Biden-related decision, but the difference here seems to be that Scavino’s edited video isn’t strictly a political ad. It’s simply a cut of Biden’s speech–so it’s vulnerable to Facebook’s general misinformation policies.
On that note, though: Facebook actually has cracked down on some Trump political ads. Last week, it pulled ads that linked the U.S. census with Trump’s campaign, urging people to submit an “Official 2020 Congressional District Census” to help “defeat the Democrats and the FAKE NEWS.” The link given by the ads took people to the Trump campaign website and a survey about their views on things like immigration and military spending, then asked them for a donation, per Politico.
The U.S. census is one of a few protected subjects that will get politicians’ content removed. Also included is information about voting, such as how to register and the locations of polling places. Because Trump’s ads could make people think they were submitting census material when they were really just filling out a survey for his campaign, Facebook pulled the ads.
