Twitter has pulled a picture shared by President Donald Trump for copyright infringement. The tweet, which at the time of writing was liked by more than 300,000 people, featured a photograph taken by Damon Winter, a Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer, for a New York Times piece from 2015.
The president, however, had turned the photo into a meme by slapping on a caption: “In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.” While the original tweet has been allowed to stay up, Twitter has censored the media with an overlaid error that reads: “This image has been removed in response to a report by the copyright owner.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2020
Twitter took down the picture after a takedown notice was filed by the New York Times. “Per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives,” a Twitter spokesperson told Digital Trends. The complaint was reviewed by Harvard University’s Lumen Database, a third-party research group Twitter relies on to respond to cease and desist letters.
This is the third time Twitter has disabled a tweet by the president over copyright issues. Last month, the social network pulled down a doctored CNN video tweeted by Trump. “The outrageous war on President Trump being waged by the Silicon Valley Mafia continues. The entire point of the video was to demonstrate how video can easily be manipulated by the media and others, so the labeling of the video as ‘manipulated’ comically confirms the whole premise. The joke is on Twitter,” Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump campaign said at the time.
A few weeks before that, Twitter also took down videos posted by two of the Trump administration’s reelection campaign profiles, Team Trump and Trump War Room, for violating copyrights.
We’ve reached out to the New York Times, the Trump administration, and Twitter for more information and we’ll update the story when we hear back.
Over the last week, online platforms have dropped the hammer on the Trump administration. Two days ago, Reddit, in a wide hate speech purge, banned the biggest pro-Trump community on its social network. On the same day, Twitch also announced it’s temporarily banning President Donald Trump’s channel. In addition, Facebook said it will begin flagging “hateful” content no matter how newsworthy it is.
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