Facebook removes post of Trump claiming children ‘almost immune’ to COVID-19
San Francisco, US, Aug 5 (efe-epa).- Facebook for the first time removed a video from the account of the United States president on Wednesday in which he said that children were “almost immune” from COVID-19.
The video showed an interview Donald Trump gave to Fox News earlier in the day.
In it, he argued for the nationwide reopening of schools and said: “If you look at children, children are almost – and I would almost say definitely – almost immune from this disease.”
“They don’t have a problem. They just don’t have a problem,” he added.
Facebook removed the post, telling US media that “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.”
The clip appeared to have also been shared on Twitter by Trump’s campaign team, and was then posted to the president’s personal account. The tweet is no longer available as it “violated Twitter Rules,” a message says.
In the past, the world’s most-used social media network has been criticized by politicians and activists as well as employees of the company itself for its permissiveness of Trump.
The firm’s management, and in particular its CEO and co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, have used defenses of freedom of expression, the prominence of the presidential role and their desire not to become arbiters of truth on the internet.
However, Twitter, one of its main competitors and the network most used by Trump, has in recent months begun to hide and eliminate comments from the US president on a regular basis, which has unleashed the anger of the conservatives, who accuse it censorship, and has earned the applause of progressive sectors.
A coalition of minority rights organizations last month promoted an advertising boycott of Facebook (which also owns Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) to which large firms such as Coca-Cola, Verizon, Adidas, Ford and Unilever signed up.
However, the boycott had a very limited impact on the firm’s accounts, given that the vast majority of ad revenue Facebook receives comes from the multitudes of small and digital businesses. EFE-EPA
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