Facebook Finally Removes a Trump Campaign Ad Containing False Information

Since the lead-up to the 2016 Presidential election, Facebook has played an outsized role in US politics. A large part of this role is the social media giant’s resistence to “censor” poltical speech.

Twitter had long been criticized for allowing Donald Trump to frequently flout their rules and regulations. But in May of this year, the website finally saw fit to start labeling the President’s tweets that contained false information.

Facebook, after months of pressure, has now followed suit. On Wednesday, the site removed a post from Trump that claimed children are immune to COVID-19.

During a Wednesday interview with the hosts of Fox & Friends, Trump said of children and the coronavirus, “It doesn’t have an impact on them and I have watched some doctors say they’re totally immune. The fact is that they are virtually immune from this problem and we have to open our schools.”

Children are much less likely to suffer severely from COVID-19, but some have died from the illness. Epidemiologists also worry about kids spreading the disease to family and caretakers.

Team Trump created a Facebook post meant to spread this misinformation. The post was summarily removed by the website.

Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesperson said of the decision, “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.”

This is a still developing story.

Todd Neikirk

Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey based politics and technology writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books and spending time at the shore with his family.