Since President Trump announced that he and First Lady Melania Trump had contracted COVID-19, Facebook and Twitter users have posted a number of conspiracy theories, death wishes, and misinformation, violating the rules of the services.
Some Trump supporters spread QAnon’s theories, wrongly suggesting that Democrats or Joe Biden had planted the virus on the microphone of Trump’s debate on Wednesday and claiming the diagnosis was false. Some also used the diagnosis to promote the false theory that masks do not prevent contracting the virus.
Meanwhile, Biden supporters posted that Trump was faking a positive test for political gain, while others expected Trump to suffer during his recovery. Other accounts, whose affiliation was unclear, posted satanic images along with messages in Arabic.
Instead, they pointed to his recent efforts to label misinformation about COVID-19 and ban threats and wishes for people to die.
But since they introduced rules on COVID disinformation, both companies have struggled to reduce the spread of conspiracy theories, false miracle cures, and misleading health information.
Facebook said workers monitoring its site were prioritizing posts about the president’s diagnosis. Twitter did not comment on whether it was prioritizing those posts, although most of the Satanic replies had been removed by Friday morning.
The misinformation that spreads on social media comes from a mix of users, bots, and political figures, some of whom have a large following. I did not put anything beyond the left. NOTHING, ”he said.
Others backed QAnon’s theories that the president does not have COVID-19 but is working to round up liberal pedophiles, as one user on Twitter put it. Earlier this year, Twitter removed thousands of accounts spreading QAnon theories and said it would block links associated with QAnon from being shared on its service. Nearly a month later, Facebook also cracked down on QAnon, collectively removing more than 12,000 related groups, pages, and accounts.
