On Sunday, Twitter has disabled some sharing options on a tweet by President Trump, then labeled it as violating the rules against spreading the coronavirus misinformation. In the said tweet, the president has stated that he had
“A total and complete sign off from White House Doctors yesterday. That means I can’t get it (immune) and can’t give it. Very nice to know!!”
Though there is a label, the tweet is still available for those who will click through the warning, in keeping with the Twitter’s position, keeping the tweets from the elected official viewable is in the public interest. The labeled tweet is still able to be quote-tweeted, however. The attempts to share the tweet bring up an alert that reads;
“We try to prevent a Tweet like this that otherwise breaks the Twitter Rules from reaching more people.”
The president’s declaration that he is now “immune” since he had already contracted the coronavirus is very likely what got the tweet flagged since there have been documented cases of the coronavirus patients becoming re-infected. Nevada has COVID-19 in March and then recovered in April only to be ill again in May. The first documented case of coronavirus reinfection has occurred in Hong Kong, where the patient displayed no symptoms for the second time.
The CDCP website has limited information about the reinfections. However, it says 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 the science “does not imply a person is immune to reinfection” from the virus.
A spokesperson from Twitter stated that it was not the first time the platform has disabled sharing on a tweet by the president containing incorrect information. Also, Twitter said that it would label the posts from candidates that prematurely declaring victory. Back in March, Twitter noted that it took a “zero-tolerance approach” to the coronavirus misinformation on the platform.
Updates from last week have further tightened the rules surrounding the spreading of false information and encouraged the people to quote-tweet and “add their own commentary” to the tweets before re-tweeting someone. The update has also included some plans to flag or remove tweets meant to incite the interference in the election or election results. The tweets from political figures with more than 100,000 followers are labeled as “misleading” are now even more challenging to access.
Twitter has flagged Trump’s numerous tweets for violating its policy on the manipulated media and civic and election integrity for tweeting lies about mail-in voting.
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