By Maria Ponnezhath
(Reuters) – Twitter Inc has permanently suspended the account of a rightwing online personality for violating its copyright policy, a week after he posted a doctored video of toddlers that was tweeted by President Donald Trump.
The move was the second action Twitter took related to Trump’s tweets within 24 hours. On Tuesday it hid a tweet from Trump threatening “serious force” against protesters in Washington DC, which Twitter said violated its policy on threatening violence.
Twitter has repeatedly clashed with Trump since it began challenging his tweets in May. The president has threatened to change laws on social media after Twitter labelled one of his tweets about postal voting inaccurate and hid a tweet about looting, which Twitter said fomented violence.
Last week, Twitter put the “manipulated media” designation on a tweet from Trump that showed a doctored news clip from CNN. The original clip was a cheerful story of a viral video showing Black and white toddlers who were best friends; the doctored version added a misspelled banner flashing “Terrified todler runs from racist baby”.
The doctored video was first posted by Carpe Donktum, an account known to support Trump. Twitter said early on Wednesday it had suspended the account indefinitely for “repeated violations” of its policy on posting copyrighted material.
“I received a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown order this morning for that video, and a few hours later a suspension letter”, Donktum posted https://carpedonktum.locals.com/post/73661/i-have-been-permanently-suspended-by-twitter-for-the-todler-video-that-president-trump-tweeted-last on Locals, another digital content platform. Twitter did not provide him a way to get the suspended account back, “So I assume they intend this to be final and permanent,” he said.
Donktum’s account was revoked in last July for eight days, over a video depicting Trump as a cowboy attacking CNN journalist Jim Acosta.
(Reporting by Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Graff)
