Facebook censors Trump posts for COVID-19 'misinformation'

Social media giant Facebook has taken down a post by US President Donald Trump which the company claimed violated its rules against sharing coronavirus misinformation.

The post contained the above video clip from an interview with Fox & Friends on Wednesday, during which the president claimed children were "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 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.

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

"Children handle it very well," President Trump said.

"If you look at the numbers, in terms of mortality, fatalities... for children under a certain age ... their immune systems are very very strong and very powerful.

"They seem to be able to handle it very well and that's according to every statistical claim."

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

The company previously removed ads from Trump's election campaign for breaking misinformation rules.

Facebook also took down Trump posts and campaign ads that showed a red inverted triangle - claiming it was a symbol the Nazis used to identify political prisoners - for violating its policy against "organized hate".

Mr Zuckerberg admitted Facebook censored and prohibited content that would "lead to imminent risk of harm".

"Stating that there is a proven cure for COVID, when there is in fact none might encourage them to go take something that could have some adverse effect. So we do take that down," Mr Zuckerberg told the subcommittee.

"We do not prohibit discussion around trials of drugs or people saying that they think that things might work or personal experiences with experimental drugs,

"But if someone is going to say something is proven when in fact it is not, that could lead somebody to make a decision that would affect their health."

An analysis by the World Health Organization of six million infections between Feb 24 and July 12 found children aged 5-14 years comprised about 4.6 per cent of total cases.

Image: AP

Видео Facebook censors Trump posts for COVID-19 'misinformation' канала Sky News Australia