U.S. President Donald Trump's official campaign Twitter account was placed on a temporary time out after the account shared a video promoting false claims about the coronavirus. The social media platform announced on Wednesday that it had restricted the Trump campaign account – separate from Trump's personal account – from posting any new Tweets for at least the next 12 hours.
The tweet in question was a video of a Trump interview with Fox News. In the video, Trump stated that children were "almost immune" to the coronavirus strain and its effects. According to Twitter, the video was in direct violation of its Rules on Covid-19 misinformation.
As a penalty for sharing misinformation on its platform, Twitter completely locked out Trump's campaign from accessing the account for a limited time. A Twitter spokesperson mentioned in a statement that the account owners will be required to immediately remove the Tweet with the video before they are given the ability to make any new posts.
By late Thursday, the account had posted a new tweet, indicating that the campaign had complied with Twitter's condition of removing the video. Twitter later confirmed that the campaign's account was completely restored.
The same video was also posted on the Trump campaign's official Facebook page on Wednesday. Unlike Twitter, Facebook chose to immediately remove the post. The social media giant mentioned in a statement that it had decided to automatically remove the video as it violated its platform's terms of use.
Following Twitter and Facebook's actions, the heads of the Trump campaign had issued a response. Trump campaign spokesperson, Courtney Parella, mentioned in a statement that President Trump was simply stating a fact that children were less likely to be affected by the virus. Parella then went on to say that both Twitter and Facebook were being biased against Trump. She added that social media companies should not be the arbiters of truth.
Parella's statement was also referring to previous actions by both Twitter and Facebook against some of Trump's post and posts made by those close to his administration. Last week, Twitter had imposed a similar penalty on Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., after he shares a video of a doctor making false claims about the coronavirus. In the video, the doctor claimed that no one really needed to wear masks.
