Protesters near the White House during a demonstration against the death of George Floyd (AFP)
New Delhi:
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defended the decision of the world‘s largest microblogging site to deactivate the video celebrating the campaign of American President Donald Trump to a black man who died in police custody, an incident which sparked massive protests across the United States.
The 3.40-minute video was tweeted on June 3. Twitter said the video on the President’s campaign account was affected by his copyright policy.
In his continuing battle against social media companies, Trump has alleged that Twitter’s latest move was for the benefit of what he called “radical left democrats”.
The US President tweeted an article on a website that Twitter had deleted Mr. Trump’s “showing empathy for peaceful protesters” video. “They are fighting hard for the radical left democrats. A unilateral battle. Illegal. Article 230,” Tweeted Mr. Trump, referring to a law in the United States that says that “interactive computing” cannot be treated as the publisher or speaker of third-party content.
The Twitter CEO responded that the latest action by the social media company on the Trump campaign tribute video to George Floyd was due to a “copyright owner complaint”.
“It is not true and it is not illegal. It was withdrawn because we received a DMCA complaint from the copyright holder,” tweeted Mr. Dorsey, referring to the Digital Millennium. Copyright Act.
Not true and not illegal.
This was removed because we received a DMCA complaint from the copyright holder. https://t.co/RAsaYng71a
– jack (@jack) June 6, 2020
The Trump campaign clip, which is still on YouTube, garnered more than 60,000 views and 13,000 likes.
Twitter reported last week that the President’s tweets on postal voting were inaccurate, resulting in a confrontation between Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Trump, who threatened to shut down social media over Twitter’s actions on his posts.
In the Trump campaign video on the death of George Floyd, Trump is heard to regret the “serious tragedy” of Mr. Floyd’s death. Later in the video, the American president asked people not to accept that “violence and anarchy” were influenced by “radical leftist groups”. Images of riots and looting are then shown, before the clip passes to show police hugging people.
American civil rights groups filed a lawsuit against Trump on Thursday after security forces fired pepperballs and smoke bombs to expel protesters outside the White House.
Dorsey strongly supported Twitter’s decision to report the President’s tweets. “Factual check: there is someone ultimately responsible for our actions as a company, and it is me. Please leave our employees out of this. We will continue to report incorrect or disputed information about elections around the world. And we will admit and own all the mistakes we make, “tweeted Dorsey on May 28.
