\n\u201cSynthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm\u201d will be removed \u2013 or at least plastered with warning labels \u2013 under new rules announced by Twitter on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/Bolton_John_4.jpg)
\nTwitter will remove or label \u201cmanipulated images and videos\u201d on its platform in a bid to control disinfo, it has announced \u2013 though its new policy reads more like it\u2019s setting itself up as a clairvoyant arbiter of truth.
\n\u201cSynthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm\u201d will be removed \u2013 or at least plastered with warning labels \u2013 under new rules announced by Twitter on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Citing overwhelming demand for stricter content regulations, perhaps in a preemptive attempt to excuse what some have already interpreted as overreach, the microblogging platform laid out a lengthy list of criteria that would supposedly be considered before removing or labeling a tweet.
\nMedia is considered \u201csynthetic or manipulated\u201d if it is edited to significantly change its meaning, sequence, or other attributes, and of course \u2018deepfakes\u2019 are right out. But \u201cany visual or auditory information\u2026 that has been added or removed,\u201d including subtitles or audio overdubbing, can also get content flagged. Technically, this creates a loophole that makes even content that has simply been translated from another language a potential target.<\/p>\n
A tweet may be labeled as \u201cdeceptive\u201d if the context in which it is shared \u201ccould result in confusion or misunderstanding\u201d or \u201csuggests a deliberate intent to deceive people.\u201d No one can control another user\u2019s (mis)interpretation of their tweet \u2013 some people are just easily confused \u2013 and similar rules have already been used to target politically-charged satire and memes. No matter how clearly labeled, one man\u2019s joke is inevitably declared another man\u2019s fake news. But a deliberate intent to deceive people? How does Twitter propose to determine who is telling an innocent joke and who is maliciously trolling?<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/Alavi_Heshamt_Tweeter_3.jpg)
Making the viewer\u2019s sense of humor the responsibility of the poster is likely to have a profoundly chilling effect on memes and other political humor, already besieged by \u2018fact-checkers\u2019 sinking their fangs into everything from the parody site Babylon Bee to the obviously-photoshopped image of US President Donald Trump giving a Medal of Honor to a terrorist-killing military dog. With the Pentagon itself taking aim at \u201cpolarizing viral content\u201d \u2013 i.e., political memes \u2013 and so-called \u201cmalicious intent\u201d in a sinister project announced in September, Twitter may have unwittingly volunteered itself as the first battlefield in the War on Memes.
\nWhile tweets containing synthetic or deceptive content will merely get slapped with a warning label when the new rules take effect on March 5, content \u201clikely to impact public safety or cause serious harm\u201d is singled out for removal. This seemingly-uncontroversial rule becomes menacingly vague on closer examination, listing \u201ctargeted content that includes tropes, epithets, or material that aims to silence someone\u201d and \u201cthreats to the privacy or ability of a person or group to freely express themselves\u201d among the categories of banned speech.
\nWhile this would seem to outlaw the tactics of groups like Sleeping Giants whose literal goal is to get those it unilaterally deems \u2018fascists\u2019 deplatformed by ginning up outrage mobs against them, Twitter is unlikely to defend the victims of such groups, if pastbehavior is any indication.<\/p>\n
Which begs the question: what constitutes \u2018serious harm\u2019, or for that matter \u2018public safety\u2019, and who determines what is likely to result in it? Twitter has allowed faux-Iranian bots operated by the anti-Tehran Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) cult to run rampant on the platform, demanding an American invasion of \u201ctheir\u201d country \u2013 some of which have been retweeted by Trump himself as \u201cproof\u201d the Iranian people want regime change.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The new rules leave a wide swath of content open to interpretation, giving Twitter carte blanche to determine the intent and likely repercussions of any given tweet. While no one wants to be flooded with deepfakes or other truly deceptive content, especially during an election season, in practice these rules have been applied unevenly to silence political and social viewpoints that diverge from \u2018woke\u2019 centrist orthodoxy. Giving Twitter the power to determine both truth and intention is conferring an authority the platform has already shown it cannot handle responsibly.<\/p>\n
By Helen Buyniski
\nHelen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twitter will remove or label \u201cmanipulated images and videos\u201d on its platform in a bid to control disinfo, it has announced \u2013 though its new policy reads more like it\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[20],"module":[81],"ctype":[17],"blog":[609],"class_list":["post-10448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mujahedin-khalq-proxy-force","tag-third-view-mek","module-article","ctype-story","blog-russia-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10448"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=10448"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=10448"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=10448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}