Twitter and Facebook removed posts President Trump shared on Wednesday. The posts were removed for breaking the social networks’ rules against spreading coronavirus misinformation.
The Trump election campaign account was temporarily blocked from tweeting until it removed a post paired with a video clip from a Fox News interview. In the interview, President Trump called on schools to reopen and falsely claimed children are "almost immune from this disease." Facebook removed a post containing the same video from President Trump's personal page.
"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," said Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone.
Twitter spokesperson Trenton Kennedy added, "The @TeamTrump Tweet you referenced 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.”
The Trump campaign has since removed the tweet featuring the video.
Courtney Parella, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said in response to the Facebook removal, "The President was stating a fact that children are less susceptible to the coronavirus.”
She added, "Another day, another display of Silicon Valley's flagrant bias against this President, where the rules are only enforced in one direction. Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth."
Facebook has taken down content shared by the president before. Wednesday's video was the first time Facebook cited its coronavirus misinformation policy, though.
In May, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company doesn’t want to be the "arbiter of truth." Zuckerberg’s words came in response to Twitter tagging two Trump tweets as containing misinformation. The company has since faced criticism from civil rights groups, politicians and its own employees for its hands-off approach to moderating posts from political figures.
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