A Donald Trump campaign video has been pulled from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram following copyright infringement claims, despite the President’s claims that the removal was politically motivated.
The video featured a series of photographs of George Floyd, the man killed by a police officer in Minneapolis two weeks ago, sparking a series of protests in the U.S.A and around the world.
Trump complained on Twitter that the platform had removed his video because it was aligned with the “Radical Left Democrats.” Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, immediately observed that this was not true and the removal was prompted following a DMCA complaint from the copyright holder of one of the images.
Twitter has been strongly criticized by Trump in recent weeks for identifying one of the President’s tweets as factually inaccurate. Meanwhile, Facebook is facing criticism from its own employees and various scientists whose research its funds for failing to take similar measures to flag Trump’s misinformation. 140 scientists — including 60 professors at U.S. research institutes — wrote to Mark Zuckerberg to ask that he “consider stricter policies on misinformation and incendiary language.”
A version of the video remains on YouTube, presumably because it doesn’t contain the contended photograph or because a complaint has not been received.
As noted by the New York Times, Twitter has previously removed Trump campaign videos because they featured music from movie soundtracks that were used without permission.
Lead photo uses an image by lexferreira89 and used under Creative Commons.
