Facebook picked up a video from President Donald Trump's website on Wednesday, which included footage from an interview with Fox News in which Trump says children are "almost immune" to the disease caused by the novel corona virus and "have a much stronger one." Immune system".
"Children are almost, and I would say almost definitely, but almost immune to this disease," Trump said in the video released on Wednesday as he urged school reopening in the fall. The video is still on Twitter, where it has over 854,000 views. On Facebook it says: "The content is currently not available."
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Children had COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, although according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most cases are adults.
Facebook and Twitter both have rules against coronavirus information that can cause harm, such as: For example, the claim that a certain group is immune or promote unproven remedies such as bleach drinking. Facebook came under fire because it didn't send politician posts to fact-checkers. However, politicians are not exempt from the rules of the social network against coronavirus misinformation.
"This video contains false claims that a group of people are immune to COVID-19, which is a violation of our guidelines regarding harmful COVID misinformation," said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone in a statement on the Trump video removed .
Twitter has flagged some of Trump's tweets that contain misinformation about mail-in ballots. However, the company is working harder against misinformation from corona viruses. For a tweet to be pulled down for this reason, it must be "a factual claim (not an opinion) that is definitely expressed and is intended to affect the behavior of others," said Companies.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comments. Twitter didn't immediately have a comment. Republicans have accused social networks of conservative speech, allegations that companies have repeatedly denied.
Facebook and Twitter have removed harmful coronavirus misinformation previously released by politicians. In March, the company and Twitter pulled down videos from Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro for the false claim that the hydroxycholoroquine malaria drug is an effective treatment everywhere. At this point, clinical studies still had to be carried out.
In July, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube removed a video from Breitbart that contained false claims that hydroxychloroquine is "a cure for Covid" and "you don't need a mask." The video had over 20 million views on Facebook and the social network was criticized for not acting fast enough.
