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Twitter Silent on Doctored Video Released by Press Secretary Sarah Sanders

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Jim Acosta, on the left, holds a microphone in his right hand. From his left, a female White House intern reaches across his body, over his left arm, for the microphone he's holding. Donald Trump, right, points at him.

A White House intern reached across Jim Acosta to take the mic away. Photo: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Twitter repeatedly struggles against its users. They’ve banned people who have complained about their harassers, they’ve allowed Russian bots to influence the American democratic process, and they’ve permitted hate speech and bigotry. Every once in a while, one of these problems comes to a breaking point. Someone with enough followers complains, a boycott ensues, and Twitter promises changes. For a short time, all is good. They ban a few bots and prominent bigots, and all is well. Then, they go back to the way things were. Bigots return, bots flourish, and users suffer.

On more than one occasion, users have asked Twitter to enforce their rules better. Donald Trump and his administration have broken the rules without punishment. Donald Trump, for example, has incited violence and even threatened it. In fact, he, very realistically, threatened the end of the world: nuclear war. Twitter has a hard stance against threats of violence, except when Donald Trump does it.

Now Twitter has allowed Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to break their rules as well. On Wednesday, Sarah Sanders tweeted a video as justification for revoking Jim Acosta’s White House press pass. The video appeared to show Jim Acosta pushing a White House employee away when she reached for the microphone he was holding. The problem? C-SPAN recorded the incident, and the videos differ. The one Sarah Sanders shared was from famed fari-right conspiracy website InfoWars. It was sped up to make Acosta appear violent.

Despite reports, experts stating the video above is a fake, and Twitter users complaining, the tweet has remained. Why is this a problem? Twitter is allowing propaganda, specifically released to vilify a person. It’s both libel and harassment of an individual, both against Twitter’s rules. Yet Twitter has refused to act.

A Falsified Video

Abba Shapiro, an independent video producer who examined the videos at AP News’ request, broke down why he believes the video Sarah Sanders tweeted is a forgery. He came to this conclusion from the following points:

  • The video has no audio here, a tactic forgers use to speed up or slow down videos.
  • The video drops frames to make motions seem more abrupt.
  • Video has anomalous blurring, meaning a frame was duplicated. This is used to slow parts of the video down, to make the White House employee’s gestures appear less forceful than they were.
  • Frames are also repeated to make it seem as though Acosta struck the employee later. This helped the forgers hide that they sped up the video during Acosta’s movements.
  • Playing the videos side by side shows how selectively it was altered.
  • The changes are not uniform, they are not consistent. This implies that forgers made these changes intentionally. A compression algorithm did not drop frames uniformly, instead, a person altered them.

You can see his full breakdown in the video here:

Without a doubt, it’s clear that Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a doctored video—the same one that InfoWars released—to back up her point. The truth, it seems, is that Donald Trump, tired of Jim Acosta’s constant questioning, banned the CNN reporter. Sanders was just there to hide evidence of Trump’s disdain for the press. Although, allowing a White House employee to literally wrestle a microphone out of a journalist’s hand is a good enough metaphor for this administration’s views on free speech.

It’s not just propaganda. Since Sanders is intentionally using a doctored video to discredit a person, it’s libel.

Twitter’s Silence

Spreading fake news and libel are against Twitter’s targeted harassment rules. Had any other user done this, Twitter would have banned them. In fact, Twitter banned InfoWars for just this sort of behavior. It’s unsurprising, then, that the video in question originated at InfoWars. Twitter bans users for this behavior, but consistently allows the Trump administration to flout those rules.

This is part of the cycle. Twitter releases new rules, they ban bigots, spreaders of hate speech, bots, and fake news. They kick the Alex Jones types out and ban InfoWars. Then, they go back to business as usual. They go back to allowing harassers, hate speech, and propaganda to thrive on the platform.

Twitter isn’t interested in keeping its users safe. It’s not interested in stopping the spread of propaganda, fake news, or hate speech. They don’t care if right-wing terrorists and hate groups use their service to gather. They just care that people keep tweeting. Eventually, they’ll stop.

The full discourse, including Trump’s attacks on members of the press, is below.

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