Washington - Twitter Inc has disabled US President Donald Trump's campaign tribute video to George Floyd
on its platform, citing a copyright complaint.
The clip, which is a collation of photos and videos of
protest marches and instances of violence in the aftermath of
Floyd's death, has Trump speaking in the background.
Floyd's death last week after a fatal encounter with a
police officer has led to nationwide protests. In widely
circulated video footage, a white officer was seen kneeling on
Floyd's neck as Floyd gasped for air and repeatedly groaned, "I
can't breathe", before passing out.
Twitter said the video on the president's campaign account
was affected by its copyright policy.
"We respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a
copyright owner or their authorised representatives," a Twitter
representative said.
The three-minute 45-second video uploaded on Trump's YouTube
channel was tweeted by his campaign on June 3.
The clip, which is still on YouTube, had garnered more than
60 000 views and 13 000 likes. The video-streaming platform's
parent Google did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
The social media platform has been under fierce scrutiny
from the Trump administration since it fact-checked Trump's
tweets about unsubstantiated claims of mail-in voting fraud. It
also labelled a Trump tweet about protests in Minneapolis as
"glorifying violence".
Trump has pledged to introduce legislation that may scrap or
weaken a law that shields social media companies from liability
for content posted by their users.