SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook took down a post by United States President Donald Trump which the company said violated rules against sharing misinformation about the coronavirus.
The post contained a video clip, from an interview earlier in the day, in which Trump claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.
“This video 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 spokesman said.
A tweet containing the video that was posted by the Trump campaign’s account and shared by the president was also later hidden by Twitter for breaking COVID-19 misinformation rules. A Twitter spokesman said the @TeamTrump account owner would be required to remove the tweet before they could tweet again.
The Trump campaign accused the companies of bias against the president, saying Trump had stated a fact. “Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth,” said Courtney Parella, a spokeswoman with the campaign.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that while adults make up most of the known COVID-19 cases to date, some children and infants have been sick with the disease and can also transmit it to others.
An analysis by the World Health Organisation of six million infections between 24th February and 24th July found that the share of children aged 5-14 years was about 4.6%. During a White House briefing,Trump repeated his claim that the virus had little impact on children.
It was the first time Facebook had removed a Trump post for coronavirus misinformation, the company’s spokesman said. It also appeared to be the first reported instance of the social media company taking down a post from the president for breaching misinformation rules.
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