Social media companies go into fire-alarm mode over Trump diagnosis

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Social media companies scrambled within minutes of President Trump’s shocking 1 a.m. tweet Friday announcing that he’d tested positive for the coronavirus, seeing it as a moment to show how far they’ve come in handling crises

Social media companies scrambled within minutes of President Donald Trump’s shocking 1 a.m. tweet Friday announcing that he’d tested positive for the coronavirus, seeing it as a moment to show how far they’ve come in handling crises.

And Facebook, the world’s largest social network, stood up an ad hoc “operations center” — like the ones built around presidential debates and primary election contests — to tackle the Trump-Covid news well before the work day started in Washington, spokesperson Andy Stone said. For those that provided clearly false or misleading information, the platforms employed a technique they adopted in the aftermath of the disastrous 2016 presidential election: outsourcing the calling of balls and strikes to third party fact checkers.

Many such claims fall into a bucket that YouTube and others call “borderline content” — posts that toe right up against the line of what the platforms prohibit but don’t cross it. The companies are facing tough calls — sometimes where questionable posts are coming from high-profile accounts. Sen. Kelly Loeffler , “Remember: China gave this virus to our President @realDonaldTrump and First Lady @FLOTUS. WE MUST HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE.”

In the meantime, said Stone, the post’s distribution has been reduced, including it ranking lower in Facebook’s algorithm-driven news feeds as it otherwise might. The major platforms argue that they’ve generally figured out how to push that sort of conspiracy thinking to the margins of their sites.

 

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EXCUSE TO REMOVE ORANGE SPRAY PAINT! classy guy .wouldn't it be nice if trump just said Im having a problem with this make up, it was supposed to make me not look so pale however I'm having a reaction so to be on the safe side I'm going to have a check-up and remove it . thank ya

RyanLizza Rtump isn’t writing any of his tweets now.. think it’s someone else.

Wild! With all the crazy news causing markets to drop, my buddy Bitcoin is holding strong 💪 (and nobody is noticing) Going from $10.5k to $ 20k soon!

Trump I thought this Rona was fake news? A hoax by the Democrats?

That was probably the first post from Trump that brought joy to the majority of Americans.

America's President is such a positive thinker!

I don’t believe he has sent any of his own tweets in the last two days. They aren’t mean spirited enough! Someone else is sending them & trying to use his “CAP LOCK” and phrasing mechanisms. When did you EVER see him tweet “LOVE?”

What happened to that hydroxychloroquine that they were pushing to combat the Coronavirus? Shouldn’t the POTUS lead by example? AllofaSuddenCrickets 🧐🤨

Maybe he should have said 'We will get through this together', before the virus took 200,000 + lives!

Funny thing is even this tweet was a lie. We found out later they knew 36 hrs before this test that they new he was positive

What about the misinformation coming directly out of the White House?

it isn’t working. TrumpCult is already blaming Obama for trump’s condition. 😒

I wonder why

Politico. Why would it be called a conspiracy theory to ask that this get investigated by the secret service as a potentially intentional infection by either a foreign or domestic actor 🤔

That one? Huh...

Look Ma...no spray on tan

Oh yes! And have done a spectacular job of outing all of the haters. Well played!

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