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Trump seeks repeal of law shielding tech firms after FB, Twitter take action over 'misleading' Covid-19 posts

The president tweeted saying flu is more lethal than Covid-19 and the social media giants it violated their misinformation rules

President Donald Trump’s battle with social media became prominent on Tuesday, October 6, after Facebook removed his post that claimed the flu to be more lethal than Covid-19 and Twitter flagged it on grounds of violating rules. The president made the post just hours after getting released from the Walter Reed Medical Center where he spent three nights after testing positive for coronavirus last Friday, October 2. He made a dramatic return to the White House on Monday, October 5, evening where he publicly removed his mask to suggest to his followers that he was a little worried despite getting affected by the virus.

In the post, the president said: “Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!”

As per CNN, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed that the company removed the post for breaking its rules on Covid-19 misinformation. Although Twitter did not remove it saying it might be in the people’s interest that the tweet remained accessible, it conceded that the post violated its rules against spreading misinformation related to the disease and flagged it. It said: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.

“However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public's interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

Trump was in no mood to accept the social media platforms’ red flag and he hit back on Twitter, saying: “REPEAL SECTION 230!!!”

Section 230 shields sites from legal troubles

Section 230 of the 1996 Communication Decency Act protects websites from legal hassles if a user comes up with an illegal post, even though there are exceptions for copyright violations, material related to sex work, and breaching of the federal criminal law. 

While the coronavirus has killed more than 210,000 people in the US and infected nearly seven and a half million, the flu has caused deaths of 12,000 to 61,000 people annually since 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In August, Facebook removed a post made by Trump that showed a link to a Fox News video in which the president said children are “virtually immune” to the virus. The social media giant said the video included false claims that a group of people is immune from Covid-19 and it violated its policies around information on the disease that could be harmful. 

Twitter, too, has found itself at odds with the president in recent months. It has blue-flagged Trump’s posts on many occasions and even drew the latter’s ire. In late May, the microblogging site flagged his post attacking mail-in voting which made the maverick president accuse it of interfering in the 2020 presidential election. Soon after, he signed an executive order to limit the broad legal shield that the social media companies enjoy. 

Facebook’s stand on Trump’s controversial posts has been different from Twitter so far as its CEO Mark Zuckerberg felt people needed to hear unfiltered statements from political leaders. Till June, his identical posts that Twitter flagged were not touched by Facebook and it made it face a backlash from Trump’s opponents as well as its employees -- both current and former. In June, Zuckerberg said in the face of the criticism that Facebook will review its content policies.

Biden also wanted Section 230 revoked

While Trump has demanded scrapping of Section 230 and the Republicans have argued that social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and others have abused the section’s shield and demanded that they either lose it or earn it by satisfying the government’s requirements, the Democratic side has also spoken against it in the past.

In January this year, Trump’s Democratic challenger Joe Biden also took on the section over a Facebook ad that controversially claimed that he had blackmailed Ukrainian officials to not probe his son Hunter during his stint as the vice president. Biden then had slammed Facebook and Zuckerberg (he called him the “real problem”) in an interview with The New York Times editorial board saying the latter could get away despite his platform publishing something false. He then said that Section 230 should be revoked immediately. He had said the same against Facebook in November last year.