Facebook, Twitter pull Trump virus posts

Facebook, Twitter pull Trump virus posts

Facebook and Twitter pulled posts by U.S. President Donald Trump and his campaign Wednesday, alleging the posts violated their rules on sharing misinformation about the coronavirus.

Gloria Tso reports.

Facebook and Twitter have taken U.S. President Donald Trump to task over spreading misinformation.

On Wednesday (August 5) Facebook removed a post by the President in which Trump claimed that children are quote "almost immune" to the coronavirus.

Facebook said the shared video, a clip from his interview with Fox & Friends earlier in the day, violated its rules against sharing misinformation about the coronavirus.

Twitter later followed suit, hiding a tweet containing the video posted by Trump's campaign account.

It was later shared by the president's account.

A Twitter spokesman said the @TeamTrump account owner would be required to remove the tweet before they could tweet again.

The Trump campaign accused the companies of bias against the president, saying Trump had stated a fact.

A campaign spokeswoman said quote "Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth." But Trump later repeated his claim during his task force briefing on Wednesday.

"Children handle it very well.

They may get it, but they get it and it doesn't have much of an impact on them.

If you look at the numbers, in terms of mortality, fatalities ... for children under a certain age, meaning young ... their immune systems are very very strong and very powerful." The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that while adults make up most of the known COVID-19 cases to date, some children and infants have been sick with the disease, and they can also transmit it to others.

A Facebook spokesman said it was the first time the company had removed a Trump post for coronavirus misinformation.

It also appeared to be the first reported instance of the social media company taking down a post from the president for breaching its misinformation rules in general.

Facebook has taken heat from both lawmakers and its own employees in recent months -- for not taking action on Trump's inflammatory posts.

The company has previously removed ads from Trump's election campaign for breaking misinformation rules.

It has also taken down both Trump posts and campaign ads for violating its policy against organized hate.