Twitter and Donald Trump seem like an abusive couple, for neither can they live with each other, nor can they live without. After getting into a feud with the platform multiple times in just the last few weeks, Trump still keeps posting controversial tweets, and Twitter still keeps flagging them. This tussle between the two has seen another post being marked for “fake news” by Twitter, just a few hours after Trump campaign’s ads on Facebook were taken down for promoting ‘organised hate’.
One would assume that the POTUS would check his sources the next time he posts something after such an incident. However, Mr. Trump went on to post yet another video on Twitter, which was flagged by the company for “Manipulated Media.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020
The video shows that CNN misreported a very popular clip of two friends, claiming that the media house ran the headline, “Terrified toddler runs from racist baby,” when in fact the two children were friends and were just having fun. It later says that “America is not the problem, Fake news is.”
The video was flagged as “Manipulated Media”, clicking on which takes you to an article about how CNN actually reported the video.
Now, we know that Trump probably posted that video as a satire, and as an ode to how “Fake news is the problem,” and did not actually mean to suggest that the piece was misreported by CNN. The video was indeed created by @carpedonktum, who is a famous/infamous Trump meme maker. However, something so obscure coming from the official account of the President does seem irresponsible at best, and manipulative at worst.
Twitter has been flagging Trump’s posts left and right from a few weeks for different reasons. The sentence “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” comes to mind, which was one of the first to be flagged for instigating violence. Facebook on the other hand, had been awfully quiet, and let a lot of the same posts untouched.
However, Facebook finally decided that things had officially gone out of hand when a set of ads posted by Donald Trump’s official Facebook page housed a nazi symbol. Yes, the Supreme leader of the United States of America ran ads that had an upside down red triangle, a symbol once used by the nazis to designate political prisoners in concentration camps such as Auschwitz. The post was taken down, as the company explained that it “does not permit symbols of hateful ideology unless they are put up with context or condemnation”.
