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Twitter and Facebook have crossed the Rubicon by unfairly censoring Donald Trump https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/06/twitter-facebook-have-crossed-rubicon-unfairly-censoring-donald/
... how odd of Facebook and Twitter to make such a meal out of a remark made by the President about Covid-19 in an interview with Fox News earlier this week: “If you look at children, children are almost – and I would almost say definitely – but almost immune from this disease.”
FB has removed the interview from its site as “harmful Covid misinformation”, while TW suspended Trump’s campaign page.
Strictly, it’s wrong that children are “immune” from Covid, yet they do seem to have a very high level of protection – which is what Trump meant.
Strictly, it’s wrong that children are “immune” from Covid, yet they do seem to have a very high level of protection – which is what Trump meant.
Among 15,230 Covid deaths in New York to 13 May, just 9 were under 18, 6 of whom had underlying conditions. In the context Trump did it – arguing there was no reason why children should not return to school – it’s a reasonable point, even if his language was a little careless.
There are far more misleading and outrageous comments on social media about children, schools and Covid-19. Take this tweet, plucked from a vast reservoir of such material, posted by an anti-Trump account on July 8:
“Now he [Trump] is threatening schools and parents send your kids into the Covid-19 killing fields… Donald Trump is a domestic terrorist”. As of yesterday, that was still posted on Twitter:
a tweet which accuses the President of sending children to the slaughter, when real evidence indicates there is a miniscule risk of any child suffering serious harm from the virus if they are returned to school. Why doesn’t that break your community standards, Twitter?
Perhaps Twitter is frightened of advertising boycotts and hopes that taking a stand against Trump will appease woke activists.
Vain hope. Even if temporarily appeased, woke activists will soon be back for more; they always are.
Vain hope. Even if temporarily appeased, woke activists will soon be back for more; they always are.
But there is a bigger danger for Twitter and FB. Their intervention against Trump’s interview blows apart any pretence they have to be mere platforms – as opposed to publishers of content.
If Twitter and FB stopped at removing illegal material, they might still claim the status as platforms. But they have gone further and forced the removal of perfectly legal material with which they disagree. They have edited Trump’s contributions – which is what publishers do.
They have crossed the Rubicon: now they can have no complaint if govts start treating them as publishers – for both legal and taxation purposes: if, say, they are made to answer for libels committed by their users, or to account for the accuracy of every statement on their sites.
How would Facebook and Twitter cope with the sheer volume of complaints? They may wish they had remained champions of free speech, detached from the content carried on their platforms, and left Trump to spout off all he likes.
