Twitter has now started to label tweets that contain manipulated media in India. The company has been doing so since February 2020. The main purposes behind labelling these tweets is to battle misinformation which tends to spread around quite quickly.
Some recent examples of Twitter doing so was during the US elections last month, as a result of which, most of the tweets made by Donald Trump were marked as misinformation as they were made after the election.
Twitter had clearly stated before the US elections that it will “label tweets that falsely claim a win for any candidate and will remove tweets that encourage violence or call for people to interfere with election results or the smooth operation of polling places.”
Let’s get you through the basics of Manipulated Media.
What is Manipulated Media? How does Twitter Recognize it?
Manipulated media can be defined as a type of media that has been deceptively altered or fabricated with. Twitter uses 3 criterias to identify these type of media which include:
Whether the content has been substantially edited in a manner that fundamentally alters its composition, sequence, timing, or framing. Any visual or auditory information (such as new video frames, overdubbed audio, or modified subtitles) that has been added or removed; and Whether media depicting a real person has been fabricated or simulated.
Twitter considers whether the context in which media is shared could result in confusion or misunderstanding or suggests a deliberate intent to deceive people about the nature or origin of the content, for example by falsely claiming that it depicts reality.
Tweets that share synthetic and manipulated media are subject to removal under this policy if they are likely to cause harm. Some specific harms Twitter considers include:
Threats to the physical safety of a person or group
Risk of mass violence or widespread civil unrest
Threats to the privacy or ability of a person or group to freely express themselves or participate in civic events, such as: stalking or unwanted and obsessive attention;targeted content that includes tropes, epithets, or material that aims to silence someone; voter suppression or intimidation.
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This means that Twitter can even remove the tweets that pose a threat to a person, a group of people, include the possibility of starting a mass violence, widespread civil unrest, etc.
What does Twitter do with such Tweets?
Twitter labels the tweets that it thinks contains Manipulated Media. If one tries to retweet that specific tweet, Twitter warns them and also restricts the reach of the tweet.