Twitter has flagged a tweet by BJP’s IT cell head Amit Malviya on the ongoing farmers’ protest as ‘manipulated media’.
The head of BJP’s IT Cell took to Twitter in a bid to call out Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. Gandhi had tweeted a PTI photograph showing a policeman wielding his baton against a protesting elderly farmer in Delhi. He had also tweeted in Hindi: “It is a very sad photo. Our slogan was ‘Jai Jawan Jai Kisan’ but today PM Modi’s arrogance made the jawan stand against the farmer. This is very dangerous.”
In reply to Gandhi’s tweet, Malviya shared a video clip labelling it as “reality”, which showed the policeman’s baton not touching the farmer.
Incidentally, this tweet by Malviya has now been flagged by Twitter as “Manipulated Media”. Twitter though is yet to provide additional information as to why it proceeded to label Malviya’s tweet the same.
Rahul Gandhi must be the most discredited opposition leader India has seen in a long long time. https://t.co/9wQeNE5xAP pic.twitter.com/b4HjXTHPSx
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) November 28, 2020
Apart from flagging Malviya’s tweet as a piece of misinformation, Twitter is also reminding users that the tweet contains manipulated media when they attempt to share it further. It is worth noting that the tweet in question was made by Malviya on November 28, and Twitter flagged it as misinformation December 2, after fact-checking platforms had debunked the misinformation in Malviya’s tweet.
Fact-checking website BOOM had also contacted the farmer, Sukhdev Singh, who said that he was indeed hit by the baton. While describing the sequence of events, he said that police was firing tear gas shells and wielding lathis.
“I saw them wielding their lathis and tried to stop it using my hand but it instead hit my forearm, just below my wrist,” he said, showing his injuries to the fact-checking portal. He further added that the lathi (baton) did hit my calf but the injury isn’t severe because I was protected by the clothes I wear underneath.
Twitter’s policy on manipulated media
Twitter “may” label tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media, including videos, audio and images, and will remove such content, if they are “deceptively shared,” and pose “serious harm”. Users will be able to get more information from “reputable sources” on a piece of content labelled as “manipulated media”.
