‘No One Should Have a Copyright on Vance Being Booed’: Video From Olympics Blocked on X

This article was originally published in Common Dreams under Creative Commons 3.0 license. Read the original article. Contact: editor@commondreams.org

By Jessica Corbett

US Vice President JD Vance was booed at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Italy on Friday, but at least one widely shared video of it was swiftly scrubbed from X, the social media platform controlled by former Trump administration adviser Elon Musk.

Acyn Torabi, or @Acyn, “is an industrialized viral-video machine,” the Washington Post explained last year, “grabbing the most eye-catching moments from press conferences and TV news panels, packaging them within seconds into quick highlights, and pushing them to his million followers across X and Bluesky dozens of times a day.”

See Also: Trump Says Iran Wants To Talk As US Warships Arrive In Middle East Waters

In this case, Torabi, who’s now senior digital editor at MeidasTouch, reshared a video of the vice president and his wife, Usha Vance, being booed that was initially posted by filmmaker Mick Gzowski.

However, the video was shortly taken down and replaced with the text, “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”

Noting the development, Torabi, said: “No one should have a copyright on Vance being booed. It belongs to the world.”

See Also: Anti-ICE Protesters are Following Same Nonviolent Playbook Used by People in War Zones Across the World to Fight Threats to Their Communities

As of press time, the footage is still circulating online thanks to other X accounts and across other platforms—including a video shared on Bluesky by MeidasTouch editor in chief Ron Filipkowski.

The Vances’ unfriendly welcome came after a Friday protest in the streets of Milan over the presence of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Winter Olympics, with some participants waving “FCK ICE” signs.

The Trump administration has said the ICE agents—whose agency is under fire for its treatment of people across the United States as part of the president’s mass deportation agenda—are helping to provide security for the vice president and other US delegation members, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

[VP]

Suggested Reading: