Facebook, Twitter removes Trump claims on COVID-19
Twitter on Wednesday said that it had temporarily blocked president Donald Trump’s official campaign account from tweeting due to a post containing misinformation about COVID-19.
At issue in the post by the @TeamTrump account was a claim by the US president that children were ‘almost immune’ to the novel coronavirus.
The tweet ‘is in violation of the Twitter rules on COVID-19 misinformation,’ a spokesperson for the San Francisco-based service told AFP, adding, ‘The account owner will be required to remove the Tweet before they can Tweet again.’
A video of Trump making the claim during a Fox News interview was earlier removed from Facebook in the first action aimed at the president’s page by the leading social network.
Facebook said on Wednesday that it had removed a video post by US president Donald Trump in which he contended that children were ‘almost immune’ to the coronavirus, a claim the social network called ‘harmful COVID misinformation.’
This was the first time the leading social network had pulled a post from the president’s page for being dangerously incorrect, although it did remove a post from his campaign’s page for using a Nazi symbol.
The move came as Facebook faced pressure to prevent the spread of misinformation while simultaneously being accused of silencing viewpoints by calling for posts to be truthful.
Trump defended his comments when questioned about them during a White House press briefing.
‘I'm talking about (being immune) from getting very sick,’ Trump said, adding, ‘If you look at children I mean they are able to throw it off very easily.’
However, the @TeamTrump account was posting again shortly after Twitter’s announcement, and the contested video clip appeared to have been removed.
‘Silicon Valley is hopelessly biased against the president and only enforces the rules in one direction,’ the campaign’s director of communications Tim Murtaugh wrote, in a reaction to the temporary ban that was retweeted by @TeamTrump.
News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net
