Facebook, Twitter takes action on Donald Trump's post that claimed coronavirus is like flu

Washington : Facebook and Twitter have initiated action against the US President Donald Trump's post that violated their rules against coronavirus misinformation by suggesting that Covid-19 was just like the flu.

The post has been taken down by Facebook, but by the time the action was initiated, it was already shared by more than 25000 people on the social media, 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.

Twitter disabled retweets on a similar tweet from Trump on Tuesday and added a warning label that said it broke its rules on “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19” but that it might be in the public interest for it to remain accessible.

On Monday, Donald Trump asked Americans to step out and not fear coronavirus as he returned to the White House after a three-night stay in a military hospital outside Washington where he was treated for Covid-19.

Earlier, Facebook had removed a Trump post for coronavirus misinformation for the first time in August. The post included a video in which the president falsely claimed that children were “almost immune” to Covid-19.