People protest over the death of George Floyd in Washington DC
Twitter has disabled US President Donald Trump's campaign tribute video to a black man who died in police custody, an incident that has sparked massive race protests across the US, news agency Reuters reported this morning.
The 3.40-minute-long video was tweeted on June 3. Twitter said the video on the US President's campaign account was affected by its copyright policy. "We respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives," Reuters quoted a Twitter representative as saying.
The clip, which is still on YouTube, has harvested over 60,000 views and 13,000 "likes". The video-streaming platform's parent Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported.
Twitter's latest move is likely to force Mr Trump into hardening his stance against the world's biggest microblogging website run by Jack Dorsey. Twitter last week flagged tweets by the US president on mail-in voting as inaccurate, leading to a face-off between Mr Dorsey and Mr Trump, who threatened to shutter social media over Twitter's actions on his posts.
In the Trump campaign video on the death of George Floyd, Mr Trump is heard saying he regretted the "grave tragedy" of Mr Floyd's death. The US President later in the video asks people against taking up "violence and anarchy" from getting influenced by "radical left-wing groups". Images of riots and looting are then shown, before the clip moves on to show police officers hugging people.
US civil rights groups on Thursday filed a case suing Mr Trump after security forces fired pepper balls and smoke bombs to clear protesters outside the White House.
Mr Dorsey has stood firmly by Twitter's decision to flag the US President's tweets. "Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that's me. Please leave our employees out of this. We'll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make," Mr Dorsey tweeted on May 28.
Twitter had tagged two of Mr Trump's tweets in which he claimed that more mail-in voting would lead to what he called a "rigged election" this November. There is no evidence that attempts are being made to rig the election, and under the tweets Twitter posted a link which read: "Get the facts about mail-in ballots."
Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg also waded into the row, but with a policy different from Mr Dorsey's. "I just believe strongly that Facebook should not be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online," Mr Zuckerberg told Fox News last week.
With inputs from Reuters