Tech giants are toughening up their tone with Donald Trump. The two social networks, contested in the United States by politicians of all stripes, acted by deleting or having removed a video posted by the president, accused of disinformation on the coronavirus.
The clip showed the US president explaining in an interview with Fox News that children were "almost completely" immune, by their age, to the new coronavirus. "This video includes false claims that a certain group of people are not likely to catch Covid-19, which violates our policy on dangerous disinformation around the disease," a door told AFP. - Facebook speak.
His campaign account temporarily blocked
Twitter went even further: the network banned the head of state's campaign account from continuing to tweet until he removed the excerpt from the interview. “The tweet breaks Twitter rules on disinformation around Covid-19. The account owner must remove the tweet before they can tweet again, ”said a spokesperson for the California group.
The @ TeamTrump account appeared to have complied with the platform's request, as it was still active Wednesday night and the video was not found.
"The president was just stating one fact: children are less likely than adults to catch the coronavirus," responded Courtney Parella, a spokesperson for Donald Trump's campaign. “Here is further proof that Silicon Valley is biased against the president. The rules are only applied one way. Social networks are not the arbiters of the truth, ”she continued.
Advertising boycott
For Facebook, on the other hand, this is a first. The network has acquired a reputation for laxity vis-à-vis political content, as it exempts the comments of elected officials and candidates from its fact-checking program and allows political advertising, in the name of freedom of expression, unlike Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of the company, had thus refused to censor the message of the president on the demonstrations in the United States, however identified on Twitter as “apology for violence”. Platforms do not have to play "arbiters of the truth", he insisted. But his decision sparked an uproar, including internally.
But the network is the subject of an advertising boycott on the part of advertisers demanding more severity against hate content, and in the face of which the network giant was satisfied with a few minor concessions.
Threats from the angry president
The platform had already promised to be intractable on certain subjects, such as disinformation linked to the pandemic or the democratic conduct of the elections. In June, she pulled ads from the President's campaign team that featured Nazi symbols. In July, she added a briefing note to a post by the president accusing postal voting of promoting corruption.
The measures taken by the two Californian groups risk reviving the inclinations of the president and his party to launch reprisals against social networks, which they accuse of favoring the opposition. They have been particularly uplifted since Twitter pinned a tweet from the president in late May, widely interpreted as inciting violence against anti-racism protesters. Furious, Donald Trump had signed a decree threatening to change a law that provides digital platforms with great freedom in terms of content moderation. His camp rallied around him.
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