Jack Dorsey calls out Trump on Twitter over video copyright

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is getting more comfortable with shutting Donald Trump down.

On Thursday, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all removed a tribute video to George Floyd shared by the Trump campaign, due to a copyright complaint, Reuters reported. The video, called “Healing Not Hatred,” featured Trump speaking about Floyd over protest images and videos (h/t The Verge). It had 1.4 million views before it was removed from the platforms. 

It’s not clear what exact image sparked the complaint. But on Friday, Trump decried what he saw as censorship on Twitter, saying the platform was “fighting hard for the Radical Left Democrats. A one sided battle. Illegal.”

Dorsey replied soon after, saying, “Not true and not illegal. This was pulled because we got a DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] complaint from copyright holder.” 

In a statement to Reuters, Facebook — which owns Instagram — confirmed the DMCA complaint.

This isn’t the first time Twitter has removed Trump’s videos for similar reasons: In 2019, the site removed a Trump video featuring Nickelback’s “Photograph” after the band complained. More recently, Twitter restricted one of Trump’s tweets about looting for “glorifying violence” and another about mail-in voting as “potentially misleading.”