Facebook deleted a post by President Trump for the first time on Wednesday, saying it violated a policy against spreading misinformation about the coronavirus, and Twitter restricted his campaign’s access to their platform
The post included a video of the president saying that children are “almost immune from Covid-19” during an interview on Fox News Wednesday morning.
“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from Covid-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful Covid misinformation,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.
This is the first time that Facebook has removed a post from the president entirely, rather than labeling it, which it has done in the past.
The same clip appeared was posted on Twitter by the Trump campaign, and then retweeted on the president’s main account.
Twitter, which has sparred with Trump previously, restricted access to the message on Wednesday evening and added a notice saying it violated its rules.
The tweet, from @TeamTrump, “is in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation. The account owner will be required to remove the Tweet before they can Tweet again,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement.
Courtney Parella, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said the president was “stating a fact that children are less susceptible to the coronavirus.”
“Another day, another display of Silicon Valley’s flagrant bias against this President, where the rules are only enforced in one direction,” Parella said in a statement. “Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth.”❐
