Facebook, Twitter take action over Trump’s posts suggesting Covid-19 is ‘just like flu’

Facebook Inc and Twitter took action on posts from U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday for violating their rules against coronavirus misinformation by suggesting that Covid-19 was just like the flu.

Facebook took the post down but not before it was shared about 26,000 times, data from the company’s metric tool CrowdTangle showed.

“We remove incorrect information about the severity of Covid-19,” a company spokesman told Reuters.

The world’s largest social media company, which exempts politicians from its third-party fact-checking program, has rarely taken action against posts from the Republican U.S. president.