People protest against the death of George Floyd in Washington DC
New Delhi:
Twitter has disabled President Donald Trump's tribute video to a black man who died in police custody. This incident has triggered massive protests in the US, the Reuters news agency reported this morning.
The 3.40 minute video was tweeted on June 3. Twitter said the video on the US President's campaign account was affected by his copyright policy. "We are responding to valid copyright complaints that have been sent to us by a copyright owner or his agent," Reuters quoted a Twitter representative.
The clip, which is still on YouTube, has garnered over 60,000 views and 13,000 "likes". The parent Google of the video streaming platform did not immediately respond to a request for a comment, Reuters reported.
Twitter's recent move will likely force Mr. Trump to tighten his stance on Jack Dorsey's largest microblogging website worldwide. Twitter flagged the U.S. President's tweets in mail-in polls as inaccurate last week, resulting in a clash between Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Trump that threatened to shut down social media about Twitter's actions in his posts.
In the Trump campaign video about George Floyd's death, Mr. Trump is heard saying he regrets the "grave tragedy" of Mr. Floyd's death. The US President later in the video urged people not to take "violence and anarchy" to be influenced by "radical leftist groups". Pictures of riots and looting are then shown before the clip continues to show police officers hugging people.
US civil rights groups filed a lawsuit against Mr. Trump on Thursday after security forces fired pepper bullets and smoke bombs to evict demonstrators outside the White House.
Mr. Dorsey stuck to Twitter's decision to label the US President's tweets. "Fact check: There is someone who is ultimately responsible for what we do as a company, and I am. Please do not let our employees do it. We will continue to report incorrect or controversial information about elections worldwide. And we will admit and have mistakes we do, "tweeted Mr. Dorsey on May 28th.
Twitter had tagged two of Trump's tweets, claiming that more mail-in polls would result in what he described as a “rigged election” in November. There is no evidence that attempts are being made to manipulate the elections, and Twitter posted a link under the tweets that read, "Get the facts on mail-in ballots."
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg also waded in the row, but with a different policy than that of Mr. Dorsey. "I firmly believe that Facebook should not be the arbiter of everything people say online," Zuckerberg told Fox News last week.
With contributions from Reuters
