Was Twitter correct in fact checking Trump?

Fact checking itself is not black and white, it is subjective

Question: Was Twitter correct in fact checking Trump?
Position‹2 of 2: No, Twitter should not have fact checked Trump
Argument1 of 2›: Fact checking itself is not black and white, it is subjective

In many circumstances, individuals are not objectively wrong or right, so the act of removing content or tagging it as inadmissible could reveal the media site as biased.

The argument

Fact-checking and tagging media is not an objective act. From the perspective of a sharer, the content could be accurate, but each person viewing the content could carry a different opinion resulting in their impression of it being extremely different. For example, in recent days, a trump official shared a clip of Biden speaking at a rally, which was subsequently tagged by twitter as "Manipulated Media." In this clip, Biden was shown stating, "we cannot get re-elect, we cannot win this re-election," which are, in fact, words he actually uttered during his Presidential rally that was later incorporated into Trump's political campaign. Regardless of these words being the exact words taken from Biden's speech, Twitter has declared it as being manipulated in their opinion, presumably due to the rest of the speech being omitted. As we can see, in this context, manipulated is a very broad and graded term since it can encompass any media that is "synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm." In one sense, the Trump administration was simply retweeting a highlight of a campaign speech of Biden's in a pure form, but in twitter's opinion, this direct evidence is considered completely synthetic and was subsequently tagged. Twitter also has a policy where "we may label and reduce the visibility of Tweets containing false or misleading information about civic processes in order to provide additional context." Twitter even has an advertising policy stating that "Advertising should not be used to drive political, judicial, legislative, or regulatory outcome" which has come under scrutiny of both Democrats and Republicans alike! These broad policies Twitter employs are inherently subjective and point to the company's inability to accept the fact.

Premises

[P1]Fact-checking and tagging media is not objective, since the same content can read as accurate to one viewer and misleading to another, as when Twitter labelled a clip of Biden's own rally words 'Manipulated Media'. [P2] Twitter's policies on 'manipulated', 'misleading' civic information and political advertising are broad, graded terms that depend on the company's own opinion. [C] Therefore, because fact-checking is inherently subjective, Twitter should not have fact-checked Trump.

Counter-arguments

The specific example stated in the Argument section, where the Trump administration shared Manipulated Media of a Biden Speech, can be interpreted differently in various contexts. In the context of Biden's speech in real-time, it was his talking point to bring his supporters together, but in the Trump tweet, they used it to show that Biden had endorsed Trump (where in reality, that was not the intention). In this context, the segment and tweet were, in fact, manipulated.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That a judgement involves interpretation does not make it arbitrary, and the example works against the premise: a clip can consist of words actually spoken and still misrepresent the speaker, because editing changes meaning — which is what the label addressed. The argument treats disagreement about a particular call as showing that no call can be made. [Rejecting P2] Broad terms are a feature of every content standard, including those in defamation and advertising law, and being graded is not the same as being subjective. The conclusion also outruns the premises: at most they show that fact-checking is difficult and contestable, which is a case for transparent and appealable process rather than for leaving a claim unlabelled.

Proponents cited

Katy Bass
“When a platform decides to label certain content as deceptive, they’re signing up for some very difficult judgment calls about the substance of messages and videos, and the meaning of ‘deceptive,’”
Jesse Blumenthal
“As companies increasingly insert themselves into making inherently subjective judgment calls, politicians are going to work the refs, and they're also going to use those fights to draw attention”
Donald Trump
“And these media companies, if you criticize it, they flag you, they take you down, they do all sorts of things. And they know it, too.”
Patrick James Morrisey
“Mr. President, I have a story that I think you’ll enjoy. When you were being criticized by Twitter, related to absentee ballots, that very same day, we concluded an investigation of West Virginia, which affirmed a lot of the very things you were saying.”