In February this year, the microblogging platform Twitter announced the official version of its ‘deepfake’ and manipulated media policy. It mainly involves labelling tweets and warning users of manipulated, deceptively altered or fabricated media, but not in most cases, removing them from the platform. Twitter places a sign, on the bottom of the tweets labelling it as ‘synthetic’ or ‘manipulated media,’ as a warning to users before they shared those tweets. On June 18, the US President, Donald Trump, tweeted a CNN video that appears to blame ‘fake news’ for racism. The clip shows a fake reading ‘Terrified Todler Runs From Racist Baby(sic.)’, and the network twists the heartwarming 2019 video of the toddlers hugging with a spin. The tweet has a baby blue warning appeared beneath it, labelling it as ‘manipulated media.’ So what does the term means? In this article, know its meaning and more about Twitter’s synthetic and manipulated media policy. Twitter Flags US President Donald Trump's Tweets With Fact-Check Warnings. 

What is Manipulated Media?

To put it in a simple way, media manipulation is a series of related techniques in which partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests. It exploits the difference between perception and reality. Many of the modern mass media manipulation methods are types of distraction, on the assumption that the public has a ‘limited’ attention span. Twitter’s ‘Manipulated Media’ tag is designed to reduce the potential impact of deepfakes and digitally altered videos that misrepresent what actually happened or happening within a given incident. Twitter Disables US President Donald Trump's Campaign Tribute Video to George Floyd Claiming Copyright Issue. 

Users on social media may not deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm. But Twitter may label tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people on social media understand the media’s authenticity and to provide additional context. You can read more about Twitter’s policy on synthetic and manipulated media policy by clicking here.

According to the New York Times, this is the first time Twitter had used the tag on one of Trump’s messages. The microblogging platform first enforced its policy against manipulated media in March, 2020 focussing on a doctored video of former Vice President of the US, Joe Biden.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 19, 2020 09:12 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).