The president of the United States Donald Trump, candidate for re-election, made the charge Wednesday, August 5, of the moderation policies of the two social networks Facebook and Twitter. In fact, they have deleted or removed a video in which one could see the president explained in an interview with Fox News that children were “almost fully” immunized because of their age against the Covid-19.
” This video includes false statements that a certain group of people is not likely to catch the Covid-19, which violates the regulation on misinformation dangerous around the disease “, explained to the Agence France-Presse, a spokesman for Facebook. This is the first time that Facebook censorship directly to Donald Trump. Twitter went even further. The network has banned the account of the campaign of the head of the State continue to tweet as long as it does not find the extract of the interview. The account @TeamTrump seemed to have complied with the request of the platform, because it was still active on Wednesday night and the video was not found.
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“The Silicon Valley is biased”
“The president stated just a fact : children are less likely than adults to catch the coronavirus,” responded Courtney Parella, a spokesman for the campaign of Donald Trump. “Here’s proof that Silicon Valley is biased against the president. The rules are applied only in one direction. Social networks are not the arbiters of the truth, ” she continued.
The measures taken by the two groups of californians are likely to revive the ambitions of the president and his party to launch a reprisal against social networks, which they accuse of favouring the opposition. They are especially escalated since the end of may, Twitter has pinned a tweet to the president, widely interpreted as an incitement to violence against the protesters anti-racism. Furious, Donald Trump had signed a decree threatening to change a law which ensures that the digital platforms a large freedom in the matter of moderation of the content. His camp has rallied around him.
At a hearing last week Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon before a parliamentary committee, the elected conservatives are focused on these issues. “The Big Tech have opened the hunt for the conservatives, it is a fact “, has launched Jim Jordan, a close ally of Donald Trump. Facebook, for its part, has acquired a reputation of being lax vis-à-vis political content, because it exempts about elected officials and candidates of its program of verification of the facts and allows ads policy, in the name of freedom of expression, unlike Twitter.
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Mark Zuckerberg under pressure
Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of the company, had refused to censor the message of the president on the events. The platforms do not have to play the “arbiters of the truth,” he insisted. But his decision has sparked an outcry, including in-house. Facebook is the subject of a boycott advertising on the part of advertisers demanding more severity against the content that is hateful, and in the face of which the giant networks just minor concessions.
The platform had already promised to be intractable on certain issues, such as misinformation related to the pandemic or the conduct of democratic elections. In June, she withdrew advertisements from the campaign team of the president with nazi symbols. In July, it added an information note to a post of the president accusing the vote by correspondence to promote the corruption.
on Wednesday, Donald Trump reiterated his opinion on the immune system of children face the Covid-19. “The children manage very well the virus chinese. They may catch it, but the impact on them is small if you look at the figures in terms of mortality. Young children have an immune system very, very strong, ” he insisted at a press conference. Young children account for a proportion ultra-minority of hospitalizations for the Covid-19, and the deaths have been very rare until now. Studies, however, have shown that even if they are less vulnerable than adults, they may catch and transmit the disease.
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