FACEBOOK, TWITTER PULL TRUMP POSTS OVER FALSE COVID CLAIMS

Facebook, Inc. on Wednesday (Thursday, August 6, 2020 in Manila) took down a post by US President Donald Trump, which the company said violated its rules against sharing misinformation about the coronavirus, Elizabeth Culliford wrote for Reuters.

The post contained a video clip, from an interview with Fox & Friends earlier in the day, in which Trump claimed that children are "almost immune" to COVID-19. “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," a Facebook spokesman said.

A tweet containing the video that was posted by the Trump campaign's @TeamTrump account and shared by the president was also later hidden by Twitter Inc for breaking its COVID-19 misinformation rules.

A Twitter spokesman said the @TeamTrump account owner would be required to remove the tweet before they could tweet again. The Trump campaign accused the companies of bias against the president, saying Trump had stated a fact. "Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth," said Courtney Parella, a spokeswoman with the campaign. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that while adults make up most of the known COVID-19 cases to date, some children and infants have been sick with the disease and they can also transmit it to others.