TIG Post

Tag: Twitter and Facebook

  • Trump banned from Facebook, Instagram for two weeks — Zuckerberg

    Facebook Co-Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, says United States President, Donald Trump, is banned from Facebook and Instagram till the end of his tenure on January 20, 2020.

    Zuckerberg said this in a post on Facebook while reacting to the violence perpetrated at the Capitol by Trump supporters who wanted to stop the US Congress from certifying the election which Joe Biden won.

    The billionaire said for years Facebook and Instagram had allowed Trump to use the platform to say all sorts but this time, it was time to implement desperate measures since it had become obvious that Trump was instigating violence.

    The statement read in part, “Following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after inauguration pass peacefully and in accordance with established democratic norms.

    “Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labelling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.

    “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

    Source: punchng.com

  • Trumps COVID-19 post deleted by Facebook and hidden by Twitter

    Facebook has deleted a post in which President Trump had claimed Covid-19 was “less lethal” than the flu.

    Mr Trump is at the White House after three days of hospital treatment having tested positive for the virus.

    He wrote the US had “learned to live with” flu season, “just like we are learning to live with COVID-19, in most populations far less lethal!!!”

    Twitter hid the same message behind a warning about “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information”.

    Users have to click past the alert to read the tweet.

    “We remove incorrect information about the severity of Covid-19, and have now removed this post,” said Andy Stone, policy communications manager at Facebook.

    An exact mortality rate for Covid-19 is not known, but it is thought to be substantially higher possible 10 times or more than most flu strains, according to Johns Hopkins University.

    The President has reacted by posting: “REPEAL SECTION 230!!!”

    This is a reference to a law that says social networks are not responsible for the content posted by their users.

    But it allows the firms to engage in “good-Samaritan blocking”, including the removal of content they judge to be offensive, harassment or violent.

    If the law were to be repealed, social media companies would face being sued over the edits and changes of user content they made.

    Source: bbc.com

  • Facebook and Twitter punish Trump for virus claim

    Facebook and Twitter have penalised Donald Trump and his campaign for posts in which the president claimed children were “almost immune” to coronavirus.

    Facebook deleted the post – a clip from an interview Mr Trump gave to Fox News – saying it contained “harmful Covid misinformation”.

    Twitter followed by saying it had frozen a Trump campaign account until a tweet of the same clip was removed.

    US public health advice makes clear children have no immunity to COVID-19.

    What did Facebook and Twitter say?

    A Facebook spokesperson said on Wednesday evening: “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.”

    It was the first time the social giant had taken action to remove content posted by the president based on its coronavirus-misinformation policy, but not the first time it has penalised Mr Trump over content on his page.

    Later on Wednesday, Twitter said it had frozen the @TeamTrump account because it posted the same interview excerpt, which President Trump’s account shared.

    A Twitter spokesman said the @TeamTrump tweet “is in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation”.

    “The account owner will be required to remove the Tweet before they can Tweet again.”

    It later appeared to have been deleted.

    Twitter last month temporarily suspended Mr Trump’s son, Donald Jr, for sharing a clip it said promoted “misinformation” about coronavirus and hydroxychloroquine.

    But in March, Twitter said a tweet by entrepreneur Elon Musk suggesting children are “essentially immune” to coronavirus did not break its rules.

    What did Trump say in his TV interview?

    Speaking by telephone to morning show Fox and Friends on Wednesday, Mr Trump argued it was time for all schools nationwide to reopen.

    He said: “If you look at children, children are almost – and I would almost say definitely – almost immune from this disease.

    “So few, they’ve got stronger, hard to believe, I don’t know how you feel about it, but they’ve got much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this.

    “And they don’t have a problem, they just don’t have a problem.”

    Mr Trump, who is running for re-election in November, also said of coronavirus: “This thing’s going away. It will go away like things go away.”

    Source: bbc.com

  • Facebook and Twitter suspend troll accounts

    Twitter and Facebook say they’ve suspended a small network of accounts linked to Russia, but based in Ghana and Nigeria, for attempting to sow discord.

    The social media firms said the profiles targeted American users by talking about social issues such as race and civil rights.

    Pages have also been removed from Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

    The company said more than 260,000 people followed one or more of the Instagram accounts.

    Facebook said the profiles didn’t appear to focus on elections.