Facebook takes action against Trump's coronavirus lies

Facebook has removed a post from Donald Trump’s page for spreading false information about the coronavirus, a first for the social media company that has been harshly criticized for repeatedly allowing the president to break its content rules.

The post included video of Trump falsely asserting that children were “almost immune from Covid-19” during an appearance on Fox News.

[...]

The Twitter account for Trump’s re-election campaign, @TeamTrump, also posted the video, which Twitter said violated its rules. “The account owner will be required to remove the Tweet before they can Tweet again,” a company spokesperson said of @TeamTrump.

During a press briefing on Wednesday afternoon, Trump repeated his false claims about children and the disease.

The removals are the latest in a recent string of enforcement actions by social media platforms against the president over violating content rules related to misinformation, hate speech and threats of violence.

[...]

[T]he combined crises of the coronavirus pandemic and widespread civil unrest over the police killing of George Floyd appear to have inspired greater resolve among social media executives, with Twitter and Twitch taking action against Trump for threatening protesters, spreading misinformation about voting and, in Twitch’s case, using hate speech.

Facebook has been more reticent to take action against the president over his speech. When Trump quoted a 1960s racist police chief by posting, “When the looting starts the shooting starts” during the uprisings over the police killing of George Floyd, the statement was widely condemned as incitement to violence and removed by Twitter.

Facebook defended Trump’s right to post the statement. [...] The company said it considered the statement to be a warning rather than a threat, because it came from a state actor.

[...]

While Wednesday’s post is the first time that Facebook has taken action against Trump’s account for coronavirus misinformation stated by the president himself, earlier this year the company did remove a series of ads and an organic post by Trump that featured a symbol historically associated with Nazis and in July it removed a video Trump shared to his account promoting an unproven cure for coronavirus.

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: And, of course...

President Trump’s reelection campaign accused Facebook of displaying “flagrant bias” against the president after the social media platform removed a post from his official page on Wednesday.

  The Hill

Bias against lies.

Countdown to nasty Trump tweet.