WASHINGTON: Facebook and Twitter took action on posts from US President Donald Trump for violating their rules against coronavirus misinformation by suggesting that COVID-19 was just like the flu.
Facebook took the post down and Twitter added a label warning of misinformation about the coronavirus before a user could click to view it. Twitter also prevented the tweet from being shared.
Twitter disabled retweets on a similar tweet from Trump and added a warning label that said it broke its rules on “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19” but that it might be in the public interest for it to remain accessible.
In the post, which was shared on both Facebook and Twitter, Trump said: “Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!”
During the 2019-2020 influenza season, the flu was associated with 22,000 deaths in the United States, according to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since the first case of the novel coronavirus was recorded in the United States at the beginning of this year, more than 210,000 people in the country have died of the disease caused by the virus, the world’s highest death toll.
Trump told Americans “to get out there” and not fear COVID-19 as he returned to the White House after a three-night stay in a military hospital outside Washington where he was treated for COVID-19.
After Twitter and Facebook flagged his posts, Trump tweeted “REPEAL SECTION 230!”. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act allows online platforms to moderate and remove harmful content without being penalized.
In May, Trump signed an executive order targeting the legislation, claiming alleged censorship by the platforms. The order came shortly after Twitter added a fact-check label to his tweets for the first time.
Twitter has been using labels to flag tweets with misinformation including from the president. Facebook removed a Trump post for coronavirus misinformation for the first time in August. The post included a video in which the president falsely claimed that children were “almost immune” to COVID-19.
