For the first time, Twitter has flexed the sweeping new powers it announced in a policy update last month by applying a ‘manipulated media’ label to a video that was retweeted by President Trump. Not surprisingly, the move was helpful to Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.

At a campaign rally over the weekend, Biden seemed to lose his train of thought and mistakenly declared, “We can only re-elect Donald Trump.” Although it isn't clear exactly what Biden was trying to say, he obviously wasn't trying to say that. However, the video itself was only clipped for length. It wasn't manipulated in any way and no words were put in Biden's mouth.

Hence, the problem: If clipping a video is enough to qualify it as ‘manipulated media,’ then every video on the platform is susceptible to the new label. Amazingly, Twitter used this new label for the first time in the exact manner many skeptics predicted when it was originally announced.

The new labeling function also suffered a glitch that prevented it from displaying properly for some users. This provided more fodder for those that believe the new policy has been implemented too hastily.

Here's the original tweet from Dan Scavino:

For the First time, Twitter has applied the “Manipulated Media” label to a Video.



The Video was clipped, not edited, in a Tweet from @DanScavino that was Retweeted by President Trump.



This video was simply shortened.



This means every single clip on Twitter is “Manipulated”. https://t.co/mi8GI9ktAs — Benny (@bennyjohnson) March 8, 2020

The video was NOT manipulated. https://t.co/p9QrNPYOvf — Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) March 9, 2020