Facebook removed one of Donald Trump’s posts on its platform on Wednesday, concluding that it contained misinformation about the coronavirus.
The post was a clip from a Fox News interview in which the president said that children are almost immune from the coronavirus. On Fox & Friends earlier on Wednesday, Trump said, “If you look at children, children are almost — and I would almost say definitely, but almost immune from this disease, so few.”
Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook, told The Washington Post that the video “includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation or our policies around harmful COVID misinformation.” This was the first time that Facebook removed one of Trump’s posts for coronavirus misinformation.
The platform has been under pressure to take more aggressive action to remove or label posts that contain misinformation or hate speech. A Stop Hate for Profit campaign promoted an advertising boycott of Facebook in July, drawing more than 1,000 companies.
Twitter has sanctioned high profile users for COVID-19 misinformation. Last week, a number of features on Donald Trump Jr.’s account were temporarily suspended after he posted a video in which a group of doctors claimed that hydroxychloroquine was a “cure” for the virus.
(Excerpt) Read more in: Deadline