Facebook and Twitter accessed videos released on President Donald Trump's accounts on Wednesday. This included an interview with Fox News in which the President said children are "almost immune" to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus and have "a much stronger immune system".
"Children are almost, and I would say almost definitely, but almost immune to this disease," Trump said in the video that was released on Wednesday as he urged school reopening in the fall.
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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.
Both Facebook and Twitter have rules against coronavirus misinformation that can lead to damage, e.g. 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 .
A link to the Facebook video post takes you to a page that reads "Content is currently unavailable."
The video was still on Trump's Twitter account and had over 900,000 views after Facebook pulled it down. A Twitter spokesman said in a statement that the video violated its rules. Trump shared the video by posting a link to a tweet posted by the @TeamTrump account. The @TeamTrump account holder had to remove the video to tweet again, a Twitter spokesman said. A link to the video appeared in Trump's tweet late Wednesday afternoon, but clicking it led to a screen that read "Something went wrong."
In March, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that children are "essentially immune" to the corona virus, but Twitter said it didn't break its rules after examining the context of the tweet. A Twitter spokesman didn't immediately answer questions about why the situation was different.
Twitter has flagged some of Trump's tweets that contain misinformation about mail-in ballots. However, the company takes a different approach against coronavirus misinformation. 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 censoring conservative language, which companies have repeatedly denied. In May, Trump signed an implementing regulation that aims to limit legal protection that protects Facebook, Twitter, and other online businesses from liability for content posted by their users.
Facebook and Twitter have removed harmful coronavirus misinformation previously released by politicians. In March, Facebook 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's right-wing news site that contained false claims that hydroxychloroquine is "a cure for Covid" and "you don't need a mask." The video had about 20 million views on Facebook and the social network was criticized for not acting fast enough.
