Twitter Suppresses Speech by Calling It ‘Manipulated Media’

Twitter recently rolled out a new policy aimed at “manipulated media.” Its first target: a 13-second clip tweeted by Dan Scavino, White House director of social media, featuring [out of context words from Joe Biden]. The Biden campaign quickly denounced the video as “disinformation” and pressured both Twitter and Facebook to take it down. Twitter slapped the manipulated-media label on it. Facebook put a “partly false” screen over it. The debate that followed helped earn the clip millions of views.

Twitter erodes its credibility when it labels the actual words spoken by a politician as manipulated media. Social-media companies should get out of the speech-police business. It opens them up to political pressure and accusations of arbitrariness and bias. Short of that, online platforms should give users the power to opt out of the political gamesmanship. If you don’t want anyone to fact check the political speech in your feed, you should be allowed to opt for a filter-free experience. Empowering users to make this choice for themselves allows for more speech and more control.