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By Beth Stibal |

Facebook and Twitter Arbitrarily Order Trump to Delete “Misinformation”

Facebook and Twitter are censoring President Trump’s posts while allowing posts with similar content belonging to Elon Musk to remain on their platform. Facebook deleted the post in which the president claimed during an interview on “FOX and Friends” that children were “almost immune” to coronavirus saying it contained “harmful Covid misinformation.” Twitter followed by saying it had frozen a Trump campaign account until a tweet of the same clip from a FOX News interview was removed. A Facebook spokesperson said on Wednesday evening: “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.” It was the first time the social giant had taken action to remove content posted by the president based on its coronavirus-misinformation policy, but not the first time it has penalized Mr Trump over content on his page. Later on Wednesday, Twitter said it had frozen the @TeamTrump account because it posted the same interview excerpt, which President Trump’s account shared. A Twitter spokesman said the @TeamTrump 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.” It later appeared to have been deleted. Children can catch and transmit the virus, but they run an extremely low risk of becoming ill from it. Older adults are far more likely to be seriously ill and die from complications. The largest study done so far, involving more than 55,000 hospital patients, found that only 0.8% were under the age of 19. But in March, Twitter said a tweet by entrepreneur Elon Musk suggesting children are “essentially immune” to coronavirus did not break its rules.

WHAT DID THE PRESIDENT ACTUALLY SAY? Speaking by telephone to morning show Fox and Friends on Wednesday, Mr Trump argued it was time for all schools nationwide to reopen. He said: “If you look at children, children are almost – and I would almost say definitely – almost immune from this disease. “So few, they’ve got stronger, hard to believe, I don’t know how you feel about it, but they’ve got much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this. “And they don’t have a problem, they just don’t have a problem.” Twitter last month temporarily suspended Mr Trump’s son, Donald Jr, for sharing a clip it said promoted “misinformation” about coronavirus and hydroxychloroquine while allowing Elon Musk’s post to stand.