Facebook Inc and Twitter took action against posts by US President Donald Trump on Tuesday for violating their rules against misinformation about the coronavirus by suggesting that Covid-19 was like the flu.
Facebook removed the post, but not before it was shared about 26,000 times, data from the company’s metric tool CrowdTangle showed.
“We removed the incorrect information on the severity of Covid-19,” a company spokesperson told Reuters.
The world’s largest social media company, which exempts politicians from its third-party fact-checking program, has rarely taken action against posts by the Republican President of the United States.
Twitter disabled retweets in a similar tweet from Trump on Tuesday, adding a warning tag saying it broke its rules on “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19,” but that it could be in the public interest to remain accessible .
During the 2019-2020 flu season, the flu was associated with 22,000 deaths in the United States, according to estimates by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://bit.ly/30ByG1m)
Since the first case of the new coronavirus was recorded in the United States earlier this year, more than 210,000 people in the country have died from the disease caused by the virus, the highest death toll in the world.
On Monday, Trump told Americans to “get out there” and not fear Covid-19 when he returned to the White House after a three-night stay at a military hospital outside Washington, where he was treated for Covid-19. .
“Silicon Valley and the mainstream media have consistently used their platforms to promote fear and censor President Trump to serve his own agenda, even now, during this critical moment in the fight against coronavirus,” said the spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign, Courtney Parella.
Twitter, which has been using tags to flag tweets with misinformation, including from the president, told Reuters that it is currently trying to respond more quickly and openly.
Facebook removed a post from Trump for misinformation about the coronavirus 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.
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