FB hits Trump’s misinformation
FACEBOOK and Twitter took aim at US President Donald Trump and his campaign Wednesday ( Thursday in Manila) over a video post in which he contended that children are "almost immune" to the coronavirus, a claim they said amounted to "misinformation."
In an extraordinary move, Facebook removed the clip from the president's account — the first time it has taken down one of his posts for violating its content rules.
The video — an excerpt from a Fox News interview — "includes false claims that a group of people is immune from Covid-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful Covid misinformation," a Facebook spokesperson told Agence France-Presse.
Twitter meanwhile said it had blocked Trump's official campaign account over a tweet containing the same video, in which Trump made the case for reopening US schools come September.
A spokesperson for the San Franciscobased service told AFP the tweet was "in violation of the Twitter rules on Covid-19 misinformation," adding that the campaign would have to remove it before being allowed to tweet again.
Soon thereafter, the @TeamTrump account was active, suggesting the contested video had been taken down.
"Another day, another display of Silicon Valley's flagrant bias against this president, where the rules are only enforced in one direction," the Trump campaign's deputy national press secretary Courtney Parella said in a statement.
"The president was stating a fact that children are less susceptible to the coronavirus," she said. "Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth."
Health officials have urged people of all age groups to protect themselves against exposure to the coronavirus.
Trump defended his comments about the virus's effect on children when challenged during a White House press briefing earlier Wednesday.
"I'm talking about (being immune) from getting very sick," Trump said.
"If you look at children I mean they are able to throw it off very easily."
How likely children are to contract or spread the coronavirus has become a deeply contentious issue in the US, with reopening schools essential to enabling many parents to go back to work.