Facebook, Twitter take aim at Trump 'misinformation'

Facebook removed the clip from the president's account

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Facebook and Twitter took aim at US President Donald Trump and his campaign Wednesday over a video post in which he contended that children are "almost immune" to the coronavirus, a claim they 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 AFP.

Twitter meanwhile said it had blocked Trump’s official campaign account over a tweet containing the same video, in which Trump made the case for reopening US schools come September.

A spokesperson for the San Francisco-based service told AFP 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 the contested video had been taken down.

"Another day, another display of Silicon Valley’s flagrant bias against this president, where the rules are only enforced in one direction," the Trump campaign’s deputy national press secretary Courtney Parella said in a statement.

"The president was stating a fact that children are less susceptible to the coronavirus," she said. "Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth."