In January 2020, Twitter had mentioned that it would begin labeling Tweets that contain manipulated or synthetic media. It has shown this over the course of two days when it flagged Tweets about Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
As part of Twitter’s policy and responsibility to users, it mentions that people should be able to find ‘reliable information’ when they come on the platform. Videos and images manipulated or edited with various software defeat this purpose. Especially, if a user is sharing the media with the intent of passing it off as original.
We see two recent examples of how Twitter’s artificial intelligence (AI) software has done this job. The first one has to do with a photo that appears to show Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump holding a Bible in a similar pose.
I reached out to Twitter to ask about this totally fake photoshopped photo that has gone viral where they added a bible to Hitler’s hand and they will be adding a manipulated media label to tweets sharing it soon. Really dirty and sick tactic from the left to do this. pic.twitter.com/WQnyute8Jm
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 2, 2020
The photo had gone viral until Twitter started to add the ‘Manipulated Media’ label to the bottom of the Tweet as you see above with a link for more information. Clicking on the information link shows you what researchers confirm. For example, for the above picture, Twitter’s statement reads:
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“BuzzFeed reporters and Snopes concluded that an image circulating of Adolf Hitler holding a Bible is edited, after some people were using side-by-side images to draw parallels to President Trump.
“On Monday, Trump held a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, just across the road from the White House, for a photo op.”
In the same manner, Twitter also flagged a video that has over 2.3 million views. The video portrays US Presidential aspirant, struggling to finish statements.
OMG! WTH! Can you imagine @JoeBiden being @POTUS? He can’t answer a simple question or make a simple statement even with the help of the idiots at @TheView!Did u catch some of their faces.They can’t believe it either #JoesNotSorry #WalkAway pic.twitter.com/rWZmViMSWe
— Malik Obama (@ObamaMalik) June 4, 2020
Twitter’s statement on the edited video reads:
“A video has been circulating of Joe Biden appearing on The View in April 2019. Recently, President Trump Retweeted the video. According to Reuters and PolitiFact, the video has been edited in a misleading way.”
While the social media company insists that it is not engaged in ‘fact-checking’ as is evident from not blocking the fingered posts; it says that it will keep providing ‘context’ for flagged Tweets. This will help users to understand posts that they come across that could mislead them.
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