The video of Immanuel quickly went viral, drawing millions of views on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in a matter of hours. called a “must watch,” features Houston doctor Stella Immanuel, who claimed that a combination of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and the antibiotic Zithromax was a “cure” for the coronavirus and that “you don’t need to wear a mask.” The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said that hydroxychloroquine is “unlikely to produce an antiviral effect,” and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends wearing masks to stop the spread of the virus. But the video itself has continued to spread across social media platforms, raising fresh questions about how companies like Facebook and Twitter handle misinformation. Many of those tweets were later removed, and Twitter suspended several of the users behind them, including Trump’s son, for 12 hours. On Monday night, the president retweeted accounts that posted a video falsely claiming that hydroxychloroquine cures Covid-19, including one tweet from his son Donald Trump Jr. That examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.Social media platforms are struggling to contain a new round of coronavirus conspiracy theories due, in part, to Donald Trump. (The CDC subsequently removed the guidance.) Platforms may have become more comfortable stopping Trump, his family, and his allies from sharing harmful content, but as long as the White House can exert pressure on institutions like the CDC, social media may be partly in thrall to what the president considers to be the truth. Reuters revealed, though, that the CDC had crafted the guidance at the request of the White House’s coronavirus task force. Barrett points out that, for a while, Twitter did not consider the promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure to be misinformation, partly because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a highly unusual guidance noting that there was anecdotal proof that the drug might work. That’s likely why Facebook and Twitter pounced so quickly on these coronavirus tweets. The Real Problem With Being a Dad As Old As Robert De Niro and Al PacinoĪs Bridget Barrett outlines in Slate, social media platforms tend to be willing to be arbiters of truth for “health, manipulated media, tragic events, and civic processes,” because diverting from the institutional consensus on these issues can cause demonstrable harms. Here’s How to Factor It Into Your Workouts.įlying Is About to Get Even More Frustrating-but There’s a Way Out Sports Scientists Missed Something Crucial for Years. Though CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued that platforms should not be the “arbiters of truth,” he apparently thought Facebook should serve that role for health information. For example, when Facebook tried to take a free speech stand in October by allowing politicians to disseminate misinformation in ads, it did carve out an exception by asserting that the platform would remove anti-vaccine ads, no matter who purchased them. While social media platforms have traditionally been permissive when it comes to hate speech and conspiracy theories, they’ve generally treated medical misinformation as a third-rail issue. for sharing a viral video of medical professionals discussing their views on Hydroxychloroquine is further proof that Big Tech is intent on killing free expression online and is another instance of them committing election interference to stifle Republican voices.” Andrew Surabian, a spokesperson for Trump Jr., said in a statement, “Twitter suspending Don Jr. Twitter took similar actions against Arizona GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward after she shared the same video.Īlready, Trump Jr.’s confederates have been using this latest incident to sharpen their allegations that tech companies are engaging in political censorship. One of those users was Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted out the video with the caption, “This is a much watch!!! So different from the narrative that everyone is running with.” As a consequence, Twitter blocked the president’s son tweeting, retweeting, following, or liking anything on the platform for 12 hours. A viral video, which touted the discredited coronavirus remedy hydroxychloroquine and claimed that people don’t need to wear masks, caught the attention of millions of users, leading the platforms to remove posts of the video and ban accounts. On Monday and Tuesday, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter tried to put out a misinformation wildfire. This article is part of the Free Speech Project, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech.
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