Twitter has removed a video tribute to George Floyd that had been posted to the account of US President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign ‘Team Trump’, noting that the video was disabled due to a complaint from the copyright owner.
A four-minute video lamenting the “grave tragedy” of George Floyd’s death was first tweeted on Thursday and was re-tweeted by Trump and one of his sons. Following the deletion, Team Trump claimed that Twitter is “censoring a unifying and uplifting message” and tweeted a YouTube link to a video message from Trump, urging users to make it go viral.
In the video, Trump warns against “radical leftwing groups”, including Antifa, and praises law enforcement officials as “devoted public servants”, outlining that he supports “peaceful protesters and every law-abiding citizen”.
The Trump re-election campaign asked Twitter to explain how the deleted video – which remains up on its original site – violate the social media company’s copyright rules, but has not yet received a response, according to The Hill.
Lately, tensions between Trump and social media have escalated as his posts have been flagged or removed. The president’s response to violent riots in Minneapolis, in which he called aggressive protesters “thugs” and repeated a 1967 comment made by the Miami chief of police, has again become something of a catch phrase: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. That comment was also deleted from his feed. Twitter later labeled two posts Trump tweeted regarding vote-by-mail balloting as “potentially misleading” and tagged them with fact-check labels.
Trump has asserted that social media companies are controlled by the “radical left” and has promised that he will impose new regulations to make it easier for people to sue social media platforms over their content.
However, the president faces a new lawsuit, filed by Center for Democracy & Technology, that claims that his executive order targeting social media is unconstitutional.
Source: Sputnik
