(Bloomberg) — Facebook Inc. removed a post from U.S. President Donald Trump’s page on its social network for violating the company’s policy on coronavirus misinformation.
The video posted included an interview Trump did Wednesday with Fox News in which he said children are “virtually immune” to getting the Covid-19 coronavirus. “They don’t have a problem, they just don’t have a problem,” Trump added, as part of an argument for why schools should reopen. “It doesn’t have an impact on them. I’ve watched some doctors say they’re totally immune.”
Facebook for months has said it will prioritize removing Covid-19 misinformation that could cause people harm. “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,” spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement.
The video is still on Trump’s account on Twitter Inc.’s site.
Spokespeople for the White House and the Trump campaign didn’t immediate respond to requests for comment.
Facebook has been criticized in recent months by those who say the company has failed to enforce its information policies against Trump. A third-party auditor said last month that Facebook didn’t follow its policies regarding voter suppression by not acting against the president’s post in late May that included misleading information about mail-in voting.
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has said that fighting misinformation on Covid-19 is easier than on other topics because the company has reliable sources to help determine what is true, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
“Children and adolescents are just as likely to become infected as any other age group and can spread the disease,” according to the World Health Organization website. The CDC says that while children don’t appear to be at higher risk for Covid-19 than adults, there are some children who have contracted the virus, and recommends they follow the same social distancing guidelines as adults.
(Updates with CDC and WHO information in the final paragraph.)
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