Social-Media
Twitter flags, limits the Trump tweet sharing to being 'immune' to coronavirus
Twitter disabled some of President Trump's tweet choices on Sunday and branded it as breaching its rules against spreading coronavirus misinformation. In the post, the president said he had a total and complete sign from the Doctors of the White House yesterday. That means I can't get it (immune) and I can't give it to you. Really interesting to know!! Even with the sticker, the tweet is still open to anyone who click through the notice, in keeping with Twitter's perception that keeping tweets from elected officials accessible is in the public interest.
And attempts to post a tweet raise a warning that reads, We're trying to prevent a Tweet like this that would otherwise violate the Twitter rules from reaching more people. However, the tweet labeled still has the potential to quote-tweeted.
The President 's statement that he is now "immune" because he has already contracted coronavirus is presumably what the tweet flagged since there have been reported cases of coronavirus patients being reinfected. A man in Nevada had COVID-19 in March and then recovered in April only to fall ill again in May. The first recorded case of coronavirus re-infection occurred in Hong Kong, where the patient had no signs the second time around.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has little knowledge regarding re-infections, but states that a person who has had and recovered from COVID-19 may have low levels of virus in their bodies for up to 3 months after diagnosis, and that science does not mean that a person is resistant to re-infection from the virus.
A Twitter spokesperson said it was not the first time that the President's tweet containing incorrect information had disabled the platform.
In addition to last month's update to its policies that would mark or delete tweets with misleading details about election rigging and outcomes, Twitter also said that it would mark candidate posts prematurely proclaiming victory.
And Twitter said back in March that it was following a "zero-tolerance approach" to coronavirus misinformation on its website.
Last week's updates further tightened the guidelines for disseminating misinformation and allowed people to quote-tweet and "add their own comments" to tweets until retweeting someone. The update also included plans to flag or remove tweets intended to incite interference in the election or election results, and tweets from political figures with more than 100,000 followers — including President Trump — named "misleaders" are now more difficult to access.
Twitter has branded some of Trump's tweets for breaching his stance on manipulated media and public honesty, and for tweeting falsehoods about mail-in voting.
The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment Sunday.
