Facebook removes Trump post falsely saying flu is more lethal than Covid

[ThinkingSapien]

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/06/tech/facebook-trump-covid-flu-false/index.html

Facebook removes Trump post falsely saying flu is more lethal than Covid​

(CNN)Facebook on Tuesday removed a post from President Trump in which he falsely claimed that Covid-19 is less deadly than the seasonal flu.

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the company removed the post for breaking its rules on Covid-19 misinformation.

President Trump has, by his own admission, played down the threat of Covid-19. Now, while battling his own bout of the disease, he has continued to dishonestly downplay the severity of the virus.

His post on Tuesday falsely equated Covid-19 to the seasonal flu.

The President also posted the same message on Twitter. That post is still live, but Twitter has appended a message to the Tweet stating it violated the company’s rule on spreading misleading information related to Covid-19.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

In August, Facebook and Twitter removed a post by Trump for containing false claims about Covid-19. The post contained a video of President during a Fox News interview in which he falsely claimed that children are “almost immune” to the virus.

Tuesday afternoon, Trump tweeted, “REPEAL SECTION 230!!!” He said no more than that, leaving precisely what he was referring to out of the tweet, but it was likely a response to the actions taken by Facebook and Twitter. Section 230 is shorthand for the part of US law that gives tech companies immunity for almost all of their decisions regarding content moderation.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Trump may be faulted for saying something nobody really knows for sure, but not for making a demonstrably false statement. The true death rate has to take some factors into consideration that we don’t know. We don’t know how many people die of the flu. In 2019 it was estimated between 24,000 and 62,000. That’s hardly better than no estimate at all. Some 48% of the population gets flu shots, more like 66% of those over age 60. So now we’re talking about a much smaller number of people, in which case the percentage of deaths goes up a lot. One thing we absolutely don’t know is how many people have or have had Covid. We know the number of positive tests, but we don’t know the number of people who had Covid but never knew it; sometimes estimated at 3 times the known number.

So, it’s entirely possible Trump was right, or wrong. But Facebook and Twitter don’t know which.

And children ARE “almost immune”.

 

[Nepperhan]

I don’t like censorship, but there is no question that Trump has been irresponsible in his statements about the pandemic. Many of the things he has said are just false.

How Facebook deals with such falsities is a different issue.