Facebook Removes a Coronavirus Disinformation Post From Trump for the First Time; Twitter Temporarily Bans ‘Team Trump’ Account for Same

Heather Kelly, reporting for The Washington Post:

Team Trump’s tweet of a video clip from a Fox News interview — in which President Trump said that children are “almost immune” from COVID-19 — violates the site’s rules against misinformation, the company said. Twitter hid the post and said the account will not be able to tweet again until he deletes it, although it can appeal the decision.

Twitter spokeswoman Liz Kelley said the tweet “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.”

Facebook on Wednesday said it removed President Trump’s post of a video clip from a Fox News interview in which he said that children are “almost immune” from COVID-19, marking the company’s increasingly tough stance on political speech amid heightened pressure.

Worth emphasizing that this was the “Team Trump” campaign account, not Trump’s personal account, but still. It is bad enough that we’re caught in a nationwide quagmire over whether Facebook and Twitter should allow the president of the United States to shitpost lies, period. But lies that are resulting in schools opening to comply with Trump’s fantasy that schools should open in areas where COVID-19 transmission is out of control are so far over the line, you can’t even see the line from there.

★ Wednesday, 5 August 2020