Twitter has labelled a video tweeted by US President Donald Trump as having “manipulated media” for the first time. The video shows a black child running away from a white child while playing, with a fake CNN caption. The caption reads: “Terrified toddler runs from racist baby”, before the video accuses CNN of “fake news”.
Twitter’s decision to place a large warning label on the video is the latest escalation in a row between Twitter and the president.
Mr Trump responded by signing an executive order that seeks to curb the long-standing legal protections of social media firms.
According to a Twitter spokesperson, “This Tweet has been labeled per our synthetic and manipulated media policy to give people more context.” The “manipulated media” marker appears below the tweet, but doesn’t prevent retweets or shares, and it links to the company’s policies. This is the fourth time Twitter has applied one of its warnings to a tweet by the president, but the first time it’s used this particular one.
Meanwhile the CDC noted that as of today there have been more than 117,000 deaths reported due to COVID-19 in the US.
