Twitter refuses to remove fake Chicago Police tweet defending Derek Chauvin

A fake tweet saying "we are all Derek Chauvin" has garnered hundreds of thousands of impressions, after Twitter refused to flag the post as disinformation.

The fake tweet made the rounds on Twitter, and even after it was reported to be false, Twitter refused to correct it. The fabricated tweet shows the Chicago Police Department offering sympathy to Derek Chauvin, showing a picture of the convicted former officer, with the caption "We are all Derek Chauvin."

According to a local news source, users reported others for sharing the fake post to Twitter, but it was not removed. The Chicago Police Department asked for the social media site to remove or flag the fake image as misinformation, and Twitter refused to do so.

Twitter's "synthetic and manipulated media policy" clearly states that "you may not share deceptively altered media on Twitter in ways that mislead or deceive people" and states that said media will be labelled or removed to stop the spread of misinformation.

Chicago Police say they complained about the tweet on three separate occasions, to which Twitter said that they "reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of their policies, so no action will be taken at this time," Then, Twitter changed their story to say that they did not feel they needed to remove the tweet because "overwhelming response in the replies and mentions, debunking or refuting the authenticity of the tweet."

Chicago Police put out a statement calling the tweet "antithetical to our values" and said that Twitter refusing to act was putting "officers and communities at risk". Facebook, on the other hand, flagged the false image and displayed a warning over it to advisor viewers that the tweet was never sent by the Chicago Police Department.