Facebook removes Trump post due to coronavirus misinformation


For the first time, Facebook has removed a post on President Trump's personal page that spread misinformation about the coronavirus.
The post featured a clip of Trump's interview with Fox News that aired on Wednesday morning. Trump claimed that children are "almost immune" or "virtually immune" from COVID-19, and as such should be able to go back to school in the fall. Children can in fact transmit the virus and have died of it.
Andy Stone, a Facebook policy spokesman, told NBC News the 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."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Earlier Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the Trump campaign has run several ads on Facebook with false claims about former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. The social network's independent fact checkers flagged the ads, but their findings were never shared with users.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
-
Ukraine: Trump's mixed messages
Feature Trump reverses a Pentagon freeze on Patriot missiles to Ukraine as Russia ramps up air attacks
-
Diddy: An abuser who escaped justice?
Feature The jury cleared Sean Combs of major charges but found him guilty of lesser offenses
-
Death from above: Drones upend rules of war in Ukraine
Feature The world's militaries are paying close attention to drone use in the Russia-Ukraine war
-
Nvidia hits $4 trillion milestone
Speed Read The success of the chipmaker has been buoyed by demand for artificial intelligence
-
X CEO Yaccarino quits after two years
Speed Read Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to run X in 2023
-
Musk chatbot Grok praises Hitler on X
Speed Read Grok made antisemitic comments and referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'
-
Disney, Universal sue AI firm over 'plagiarism'
Speed Read The studios say that Midjourney copied characters from their most famous franchises
-
Amazon launches 1st Kuiper internet satellites
Speed Read The battle of billionaires continues in space
-
Test flight of orbital rocket from Europe explodes
Speed Read Isar Aerospace conducted the first test flight of the Spectrum orbital rocket, which crashed after takeoff
-
Apple pledges $500B in US spending over 4 years
Speed Read This is a win for Trump, who has pushed to move manufacturing back to the US
-
Microsoft unveils quantum computing breakthrough
Speed Read Researchers say this advance could lead to faster and more powerful computers