A Trump campaign official accused Twitter of restricting President Donald Trump’s Super Bowl campaign ad Sunday, but Twitter told the Daily Caller the video was only flagged due to specific account settings.
The ad highlighted the administration’s work on criminal justice reform and featured Alice Johnson, a former federal inmate who had been serving a life sentence on non-violent drug charges until Trump granted her clemency in 2018.
Matt Wolking, a Trump campaign official, tweeted Sunday that Trump’s Super Bowl ad had been “restricted on Twitter.”
Dave Briggs, whose tweet Wolking referenced, appears to have elected to mark his tweets as “may contain sensitive media,” which is a setting available to all Twitter users. This means that any pictures or videos Briggs tweets out will appear with a sensitive content warning to anyone with default safety settings. (RELATED: Here’s Twitter’s Plan To Create A World Where Censoring Conservatives Is Unnecessary)
President Trump’s Super Bowl ad about criminal justice reform and Alice Johnson has been restricted on Twitter after angry Democrats reported it en masse.
They don’t want you to see this! https://t.co/BPOLL5O7PM pic.twitter.com/aowHxn287i
— Matt Wolking (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@MattWolking) February 3, 2020
Twitter’s guidelines prohibit posting videos that are “excessively gory or share violent or adult content.”
I promised to restore hope in America. That includes the least among us. Together, let’s KEEP AMERICA GREAT!
Text TRUMP to 88022 if you liked our Super Bowl ad! pic.twitter.com/Lgjt53B7QX
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2020
Twitter was also accused of restricting one of the Trump campaign’s videos in the past when social media site attached a warning label to a pro-life ad centered on the March For Life. In that case, Twitter later said the post was flagged “in error.”
This post has been updated to reflect comments from Twitter.