Facebook, Twitter label video from Trump staffer as misleading — what does that mean?
A video shared by the White House social media director over the weekend was labeled as “partly false information” on Facebook, which meant anyone who wanted to watch the video had to click through a disclaimer explaining that the video was not true.
Dan Scavino, who manages President Donald Trump’s social media, shared the video on Twitter too, which labeled it “misleading media,” according to Washington Post reporter Cat Zakrzewski.
The video shows a 13-second clip of former Vice President Joe Speaking at a campaign event.
The Facebook warning sends users to the fact-checking site Lead Stories, which explains: “The video making the rounds has been edited to remove the rest of the sentence to imply that Biden had mistakenly said that only Trump could win the 2020 presidential election.”
“The video was NOT manipulated,” Scavino said on Twitter.
Users have to click through to be able to see the video, similar to how Facebook handles some graphic videos.
“We’re committed to fighting the spread of false news on Facebook. We use both technology and human review to remove fake accounts, promote news literacy and disrupt the financial incentives of spammers,” Facebook said on its user help site.
“In certain countries, we also work with third-party fact-checkers who are certified through the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network to help identify and review false news,” the company said.
Facebook said it reviews stories flagged by user feedback. “Fact-checkers may also identify stories to review on their own,” according to the company.
If fact-checkers find things that are false or misleading, they show up lower in the Facebook feed and some, like Scavino’s, are accompanied by a warning.
Politicians are generally exempt from Facebook’s fact-checking policy.
“There will be some instances where a false or partly false rating from our fact-checking partners will affect politicians. When a politician shares a specific piece of content — i.e., a link to an article, video or photo created by someone else that has been previously debunked on Facebook - we will demote that content, display a warning and reject its inclusion in ads.,” the company said.
“This is different from a politician’s own claim or statement. If a claim is made directly by a politician on their Page, in an ad or on their website, it is considered direct speech and ineligible for our third party fact checking program,” according to Facebook.
Twitter used a new policy on “synthetic or manipulated media” that went into effect March 5 to flag the video as misleading, according to a company spokeswoman.
According to a Twitter blog post on the new policy: “You may not deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm. In addition, we may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand the media’s authenticity and to provide additional context.”
A previous version of this story incorrectly referenced a Twitter policy. A new policy in effect this month led the company to label the video of Joe Biden misleading.
This story was originally published March 9, 2020 at 1:00 PM with the headline "Facebook, Twitter label video from Trump staffer as misleading — what does that mean?."
