A fake tweet purportedly placing the Chicago Police Department in solidarity with Derek Chauvin — the former cop convicted of killing George Floyd — has been retweeted nearly 50,000 times, but Twitter has refused to take it down.
The photoshopped tweet read “We are all Derek Chauvin” and featured a photo of the since-convicted Chauvin during the high-profile trial.
The tweet quote-tweeting the photoshopped photo read “That’s what we have been saying the whole time,” implying that police departments and officers supported the murder of George Floyd.
A tweet from another user that included the screenshot had over 50,000 likes but has since been taken down.
Even a fact-check from leftist Snopes rated the tweet “false.”
CWBChicago noted that the fake tweet received 38,600 retweets and 175,000 likes in the first 12 hours.
In response to users’ inquiries as to whether the fake tweet violated Twitter’s Terms of Service, the police department said the platform ruled that the tweet did not.
“We reported the tweet and were just notified by Twitter that they reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of their policies, so no action will be taken at this time,” the police department said.
One user, fed up with the hypocrisy, pointed out the double standard the platform uses in determining what tweets violate its Terms of Service.
“Photoshopping screenshots of somebody else’s tweets to make people think they had said something they hadn’t, in order to drive outrage and harassment is the offense that Milo Yiannopoulos was banned for,” the user argued.
“Twitter doesn't give a [expletive] about enforcing their own rules consistently and fairly,” another user added.
The platform ignored another potential Terms of Service violation last week, after NBA superstar LeBron James’ tweet showed a photo of the Ohio police officer who shot Ma’Khia Bryant after she attacked two people with a knife. The since-deleted tweet was captioned "YOU'RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY."
Twitter told The Washington Examiner that it cannot evaluate deleted tweets.
“Our teams are unable to evaluate Tweets that have been deleted since they no longer exist on our service,” a spokesperson for Twitter said.
James’ later said he deleted his first tweet because it was "being used to create more hate."
In yet another example of Twitter’s hypocrisy, a study from NewsBusters found that the platform censored President Trump and his campaign over 600 times before he left office, whereas the Biden campaign had been censored zero times.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Twitter: (415) 222-9670 or mail to 1355 Market Street Suite 900 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
