Twitter uses deepfake alert for the first time on 'manipulated' video shared by Trump

Donald Trump’s presidency has been filled with many unfortunate firsts: the first president to not release his tax returns, the first president to lie about his inauguration size, the first president to start international incidents on Twitter.

The list is really, really long and awful.

But now Trump’s actions have led Twitter to use a new "manipulated media" for the first ever time ever.

Yes, that’s right, the first person to be penalised for sharing blatantly doctored footage on the platform is… the most powerful man in the world. We’re all doomed, aren’t we?

The move came after Trump shared a misleading video of Joe Biden on Twitter. The video appears to show the Democratic frontrunner stumbling in a speech and apparently suggesting "we can only re-elect Donald Trump". But it was cut-off before Biden was able to complete his sentence, which was actually a call for unity.

Twitter chose to attach the new tag to the post. But Facebook is still allowing it to be shared as normal, without any signposting that it’s been doctored.

The video was posted on Saturday by White House social media director Dan Scavino, showed Biden appearing to say:

Excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump.

But the full sentence was a bit different.

Excuse me. We can only re-elect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here. It's gotta be a positive campaign so join us.

So Twitter took the unprecedented move to call out the video, in what will become a growing effort to combat deepfakes.