Trump’s posts get taken down for misinformation

• Social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube all took down a post by President Trump for reportedly stating misinformation regarding the coronavirus.
• The post contained a clip in which Trump claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.
• The Trump campaign accused the social media companies of bias against the president.

A post by President Donald Trump has been taken down by social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, citing misinformation regarding the coronavirus.

The post shared a video clip taken from an interview with Fox & Friends earlier in the day, in which Trump claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.

A spokesman for Facebook explained on Wednesday, “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.”

Twitter also hid a tweet by the Trump campaign’s @TeamTrump account, which contained the video, over a violation of its COVID-19 misinformation rules.

A spokesman for Twitter said that the @TeamTrump account would be required to remove the tweet before they could tweet again.

A YouTube video was also reportedly taken down for violating the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policies. The original interview remains available on the Fox News page, however.

Trump repeated his claim during a press briefing at the White House, saying, “Children handle it very well. If you look at the numbers, in terms of mortality, fatalities … for children under a certain age … their immune systems are very very strong and very powerful … that’s according to every statistical claim.”

While most COVID-19 cases involve adults, children and infants have contracted the disease. About 4.6% of the 6 million cases between Feb. 24 and July 12 were children aged 5-14 years, the World Health Organization reported.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), they can also transmit it to others.

Social media platforms have been taking heat over the spread of misinformation.

Facebook, in particular, was heavily criticized by lawmakers for allowing Trump’s inflammatory posts.

It has since taken down posts that reportedly shared misinformation regarding a national census and campaign ads showing a Nazi symbol, which violated its policy against organized hate.

Twitter was perhaps the first platform to take down the president’s posts, or at least mark them with a warning symbol to denote possible misinformation.

The platform was still questioned, however, for leaving up other posts. These include clips showing the president urge scientists to investigate the use of disinfectants on patients, and a March post from Tesla CEO Elon Musk that similarly claimed that “kids are essentially immune” from the virus.

Courtney Parella, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, accused the social media companies of bias against the president.

Parella argued, “Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth,” while insisting that the president was stating a fact.

Source: Reuters