Facebook removes post from Donald Trump over COVID misinformation violation

Facebook has taken down a post by US President Donald Trump, which the company said violated its rules against sharing misinformation about the coronavirus.

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 on Thursday.

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 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 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US 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.

The White House and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

During a briefing at the White House, Trump repeated his claim that the virus had little impact on children.

It was the first time Facebook had removed a Trump post for coronavirus misinformation, the company’s spokesman said.

It also appeared to be the first reported instance of the social media company taking down a post from the president for breaching its misinformation rules.

Facebook has taken heat from lawmakers and its own employees in recent months for not taking action on inflammatory posts by Trump.

Twitter has now flagged a number of the President’s tweets over misinformation, some of which were labelled with a fact check flag.