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Twitter, Facebook remove Trump campaign videos due to copyright complaint

The videos paid tribute to George Floyd and slammed "radical leftwing groups" for the unrest seen across the US.

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President Donald Trump's video tribute to George Floyd was removed from Twitter due to a copyright claim.

 Bill O'Leary/Getty Images

Twitter pulled a four-minute video that included a tribute to George Floyd from a pair of tweets posted by President Donald Trump's reelection campaign on Thursday due to a copyright complaint. The video had been tweeted by the @TeamTrump and @TrumpWarRoom accounts.

A Twitter spokesperson said the company had taken the action after receiving a copyright complaint but didn't identify the copyright holder. "Per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. 

Facebook and Instagram, its photo-sharing service, also removed the video because of a copyright complaint.

In the video, Trump pays tribute to Floyd, an unarmed black man whose killing by police set off nationwide protests, and criticizes "antifa and other radical leftwing groups" as scenes from recent protests play. Antifa, short for anti-fascists, is a broad term for far-left militant groups, and the administration has accused them of rioting. 

The decision to remove the videos is sure to fan tension between Trump and social media companies, particularly Twitter. Last month, Trump signed an executive order designed to curtail legal protections for social media companies after Twitter labeled two of the president's tweets for containing "potentially misleading information." 

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Trump bashed Twitter's latest decision, using the social network to call the move "illegal" on Friday evening. The Trump campaign had earlier accused Twitter and CEO Jack Dorsey of "censoring" Trump's "uplifting and unifying message." 

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey responded, "Not true and not illegal."

In a statement, Facebook indicated that content taken from Instagram may have been the source of the copyright claim.

"We received a copyright complaint from the creator under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and have removed the post," a Facebook spokesman said. "Organizations that use original art shared on Instagram are expected to have the right to do so."

The video is still available on Google-owned YouTube.

Andrew Morse contributed to this report.

See also: How to find quoted replies and retweets on Twitter: Try this 10-second trick

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