Facebook removes Trump’s fake covid-19  post

Facebook and Twitter penalized comments by US President Donald Trump on Tuesday for minimizing the dangers of Covid-19 .

A day after being discharged from the hospital where he was admitted with Covid-19, Trump used both social networks to say that “the seasonal flu is coming!”

“Are we going to close our country? No, we have learned to live with it, in the same way that we learn to live with the covid, which is much less fatal for most people, “she added.

The new coronavirus kills about 210,000 in the United States.

The seasonal flu has caused, meanwhile, between 22,000 and 51,000 deaths annually in the last five seasons.

Facebook withdrew the entire message. “We removed incorrect information about the severity of Covid-19, so we removed his post,” the social network told AFP .

Twitter, meanwhile, left the tweet but attached a message to indicate that Trump was breaking the rules on “misleading and potentially dangerous information related to covid-19,” and added a link with reliable information.

After leaving the hospital on Monday, where he received treatment to combat COVID-19, Trump removed his mask as soon as he arrived at the White House and promised to quickly return to the campaign towards the November 3 elections. Shortly before, he had tweeted that Americans should not fear the new coronavirus.

In August, Facebook removed a video of the president in which he affirmed that children “are almost immune” to the virus, information that the social network described as “harmful misinformation about  covid-19”

That was the first time Facebook removed a post from Trump for containing incorrect information.

Facebook faces pressure to prevent the dissemination of incorrect information and at the same time is accused of silencing points of view.