Twitter labeled tweets that showed a hoax photo misidentifying former police officer Derek Chauvin as being «manipulated media.»
As unrest over the death of George Floyd rocks the U. S. for the fifth straight day, Twitter said it has been applying fact-check labels to tweets that could inflame racial tensions.
Twitter, which got into an open confrontation with President Donald Trump this week by applying labels to his tweets, told Newsweek it was focusing its campaign against misinformation on «manipulated media» as well as on the pandemic and U. S. elections.
For example, some tweets involving the Floyd incident had been flagged. Tweets from rapper Ice Cube and Bishop Talbert Swan that claimed Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer shown kneeling on Floyd’s neck, had worn a «Make Whites Great Again» hat were labeled «Manipulated Media.» The label linked to a landing page providing information that the photo was a hoax, and that the man wearing the hat was not Chauvin.
Twitter’s labeling system was unveiled on May 11, and the social media giant says the aim is to «provide additional context and information» on tweets.
«Rather than saying something is true or false, we are providing people with more context so they can make their own informed decisions about what they see on Twitter,» a Twitter spokesperson told Newsweek via email on Saturday.
