Facebook and Twitter Have Been Deleting the Posts of World Leaders. Who is next?
By: Jonathan Stormer Pezzi
Photo of Nicolas Maduro. Photo by Marcos Oliveira/Agência Senado
New York — Last week, social media giants Facebook and Twitter started to act on their promise to crack down on Coronavirus misinformation, removing the posts of world leaders like President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
After COVID-19 was widely accepted as a substantial international threat, Twitter and other social media companies have made adjustments to their treatment of misinformation. Most notably through the removal of false content about cures and how the virus is transmitted.
In a video talking to a street vendor, President Bolsonaro discussed his frustration with quarantine, advocating to end social distancing because “people want to work”. The president also praised the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a legitimate treatment of coronavirus, although scientists from CDC and elsewhere have not yet found conclusive evidence of the drug’s effectiveness. Bolsonaro defended the comments, saying “Let’s face the virus with reality. It is life, we must all die one day.”
Twitter then gave Bolsonaro an ultimatum, remove the videos or lose his twitter handle. He relented. Shortly afterwards, Instagram, owned by Facebook, removed the same videos of Bolsonaro’s comments, claiming they violated their community standards, according to BuzzFeed News.
(São Paulo - SP, 09/01/2019) President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro during the visit to the Temple of Salomão. Photo: Alan Santos/PR
The previous week, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro also had his tweets removed after he advocated for a “natural brew” as a remedy for Coronavirus.
These are among the first instances where a social media company has censored a world leader’s content after a long policy of non-intervention. Since the 2016 US election, Facebook in particular has received widespread criticism for the handling of politics and campaigns on their platform.
However, Facebook has made a big statement by removing Bolsonaro’s video. "We remove content on Facebook and Instagram that violates our Community Standards, which do not allow misinformation that could lead to physical harm,” a representative from Facebook wrote.
Aside from world leaders, several other major figures and far-right social media accounts have been censored for their potentially dangerous content amid the current crisis.
Controversial former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, had a tweet deleted that quoted conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who also advocated for hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug, as a cure for the coronavirus. The original tweet by Kirk was later removed. However, Gulliani's twitter is riddled with other tweets about the drug, confusing some on why this one was deleted in particular. The tweet below is still active on his twitter profile.
In a final high-profile crackdown, Twitter also locked the account of The Federalist after it advocated in an article for a Coronavirus version of a chicken-pox party. In the article, Dr. Douglas Perednia recommended a group of individuals gather in order to purposely spread the virus among them, hoping to gain immunity following the infection. The idea has seen widespread condemnation.
The implications of these post removals are significant, as the sitting president of a world power like Brazil could do little to counter Twitter’s demands, and does not appear to be fighting back. So far, the guidelines of the main social media outlets primarily remove hate speech and dangerous misinformation during the current pandemic.