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Twitter removes Trump's retweet of QAnon advocate sharing 'false statistics and misinformation' on Covid-19 deaths

The deleted post pointed out how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 'updated its number' to show only 6% of Covid-19 deaths were from the disease

Twitter has removed a tweet shared by President Donald J. Trump claiming it violated community guidelines by sharing "false statistics and misinformation" about the novel coronavirus.

The removed tweet was originally posted to the micro-blogging platform by a QAnon supporter named 'Mel Q' and retweeted by the president. The deleted post pointed out how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “updated its number” to show only 6% of Covid-19 deaths were from the disease, while the rest were not directly related to the novel coronavirus. The tweet has since been taken down and replaced with a banner claiming it violated Twitter's rules.

It's true that the CDC's public statistics page notes that "6% of pandemic deaths were caused solely by the coronavirus." Meanwhile, further data indicates that the rest of Covid-19 deaths were not directly related and had contributing factors known as "comorbidities" including diabetes, obesity, and susceptibility to heart or lung diseases.

More than 182,000 people in the U.S. have lost their lives to the deadly contagion at the time of writing. Those with pre-existing health conditions are at a higher risk for serious complications, including death, per the CDC.

Considering, the removal of the president's tweet comes as Twitter has intensified "fact-checking" as we inch closer to the presidential election in November. Meanwhile, conservative voices have complained of glaring political bias by content moderators on the platform that continues to go unchecked. In the past few months, the social media giant has removed several tweets shared by Trump and labeled them false information. 

In July, the president's Twitter account was censored after The New York Times filed a copyright claim to a meme he had shared. The meme simply featured a rallying cry to his supporters, but the NYT, however, claimed rights to the original image.

Although copyrighted materials for the purposes of commentary and parody are permitted under fair use doctrine, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows copyright holders the right to request that the content be taken down. The tweet, which is also no longer available, reportedly featured an image of Trump with the message: "In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way."

The social media giant has intensified censorship of the content released by Trump. In June, Twitter blocked a tweet from the president warning Black Lives Matter protesters that any attempts to set up an "autonomous zone" near the White House would be met with force. The company stated that Trump's pledge to use force constituted "abusive behavior."

The previous month, the president threatened to shut down social media networks stating that Republicans felt these platforms silenced conservative voices and that his administration would either strongly regulate or shut them down for good.
 
"Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen," Trump tweeted. "We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again. Just like we can’t let large scale Mail-In Ballots take root in our Country. It would be a free for all on cheating, forgery, and the theft of Ballots. Whoever cheated the most would win. Likewise, Social Media. Clean up your act, NOW!!!!" he added in his tweet.

The denouncement came shortly after two of the president's tweets claiming mail-in ballots could lead to electoral fraud were flagged by Twitter as 'potentially misleading' per its community guidelines. Democrats have pushed for the presidential elections in November to he held through mail-in votes in light of the pandemic. Trump, however, has consistently claimed that mail-in votes would lead to widespread fraud in the polls.