Facebook labels as ‘partly false’ an edited video of Joe Biden shared by Trump

Facebook on Monday applied a “partly false” label to an edited video of former US Vice-President Joe Biden, according to media reports.

The labelled video depicts the Democratic presidential frontrunner as saying “We can only re-elect Donald Trump” during a speech in Kansas City, Missouri on Saturday. However, the complete sentence was: “We can only re-elect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It’s gotta be a positive campaign.”

The video was shared on President Trump’s verified Facebook page with the comment “I agree with Joe!” where it was flagged by one of Facebook’s fact-checking partners, the Verge reported. The post had over a million views on Facebook as of Monday.

The social media giant labelled the video after receiving flak over its inaction. The video also received Twitter’s first ‘altered media label’ on its platform.

The video was originally tweeted by White House Social Media Director Dan Scavino on Sunday and retweeted by President Trump.

Twitter’s new rules on doctored videos

Twitter in February updated its rules for users, announcing that it will now be labelling and in some cases removing doctored or manipulated photos, audio and videos designed to mislead people.

The new rules prohibit sharing synthetic or manipulated material that is likely to cause harm. Manipulated material which isn’t necessarily harmful may get a warning label.

In the run-up to the US Presidential elections, Twitter is also working on a new feature to add coloured warning labels beneath misleading tweets sent out by politicians and public figures, according to a leaked demo, NBC News had reported.

Facebook in January had also announced plans to fight misinformation before the elections. It had detailed its strategy including eliminating deepfake videos i.e. doctored videos edited using AI to make them seem real from its platform.

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