The feud between Donald Trump and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is heating up, after the social media site disabled a video link that the president tweeted. Trump posted a new campaign video which was quickly taken down for containing copyright images, a direct violation of Twitter’s code of conduct. As you can imagine, Trump did not take this well:
Twitter Pulls Trump Campaign Video of President Showing Empathy For Peaceful Protesters https://t.co/5DEIoPHsud They are fighting hard for the Radical Left Democrats. A one sided battle. Illegal. Section 230!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2020
After America’s whiny diaper baby complained about censorship, Jack Dorsey himself responded to Trump’s tweet, writing:
Not true and not illegal.
This was pulled because we got a DMCA complaint from copyright holder. https://t.co/RAsaYng71a
— jack (@jack) June 6, 2020
This comes after the social media giant finally flagged Trump’s tweets which promote violence, and added a fact-checking label to the president’s false tweets about voting by mail.
Of course, these measures come after years of Trump violating Twitter’s code of conduct with outright lies, threats, and conspiracy theories designed to stoke his base. The president has been given an absurd amount of leeway with regards to his online behavior, while accounts posting the exact same content have been suspended.
Trump’s campaign video was also removed from Instagram and Facebook for copyright infringement. The video plays images and clips of protesters and memorials to George Floyd, while a recording of Trump calling Floyd’s death a “grave tragedy” play over the footage. Trump’s v.o. adds, “The memory of George Floyd is being dishonored by rioters, looters and anarchists.” Twitter has declined to identify the copyrighted image and its source.
This isn’t the first time that Trump and his campaign have violated copyright laws. The president has pilfered all sorts of images and music from popular culture, including the score from The Dark Knight Rises, music from Nickelback, and imagery from Game of Thrones.
While Jack Dorsey’s actions are long overdue (and, some would argue, too little too late), other tech companies are stepping up. Snapchat has announced that they will no longer promote Trump’s account on their Discover media platform. A spokeswoman for the company released a statement saying, “We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover. Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society and we stand together with all who seek peace, love, equality, and justice in America.”
Brad Parscale, Trump’s re-election campaign manager, complained about the deplatforming saying, “Radical Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel would rather promote extreme left riot videos and encourage their users to destroy America than share the positive words of unity, justice, and law and order from our President.”
Even Facebook is finally responding to both the public outcry and their frustrated employees by rolling out a new set of guidelines they plan to pursue.
While these small, deliberate moves by social media companies snowball into larger efforts to deal with Trump’s toxic online presence? And how will they effect the 2020 presidential election, if at all? All we know is that it’s high time to hold Donald Trump to the same social media rules as everyone else.
(via The Hill, image: David Becker/Getty Images)
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