Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday took aim at US President Donald Trump and his re-election campaign accounts over a video post in which he said that COVID-19 does not affect children as much as adults, a claim that the social media companies said amounted to “misinformation.”
In an extraordinary move, Facebook removed the clip from the president’s account — the first time it has taken down one of his posts for violating its content rules.
The video — an excerpt from a Fox News interview — “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 told reporters.
Photo: AFP
Twitter said it had blocked Trump’s official campaign account over a tweet containing the same video, in which he made the case for reopening US schools next month.
A spokesperson for the San Francisco-based service told reporters that the tweet was “in violation of the Twitter rules on COVID-19 misinformation,” adding that the campaign would have to remove it before being allowed to tweet again.
Soon thereafter, the @TeamTrump account was active, suggesting that the contested video had been taken down.
Photo: AFP
“Another day, another display of Silicon Valley’s flagrant bias against this president, where the rules are only enforced in one direction,” Trump campaign deputy national press secretary Courtney Parella said in a statement. “The president was stating a fact that children are less susceptible to the coronavirus.”
“Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth,” Parella said.
Trump was asked about the videos at a White House press briefing earlier on Wednesday.
“I’m talking about [being immune] from getting very sick,” Trump said. “If you look at children ... they are able to throw it off very easily.”
“For whatever reason, the China virus, children handle it very well. They may get it, but they get it and it doesn’t have much of an impact on them,” he said.
Trump has been calling for schools to reopen after US school districts have said that in-person classes would not start next month.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has said that children appear to transmit COVID-19 less than adults and that many schools could re-open in the months ahead provided they take precautions such as social distancing and tracking local transmission rates.
Children are known to be far less likely to fall seriously ill or die from the virus. Less than 1 percent of children who test positive for COVID-19 die, according to a Europe-wide study released in June.
The study authors said the true percentage is likely much lower still, as many children with mild or no symptoms would not have been tested at all.
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