Madonna shared this photo (Image courtesy: Madonna)
Strong points
- Madonna shared a clip about an alleged cure for COVID-19
- She claimed a proven vaccine had been available for months
- She said the vaccine was being kept secret “to allow the rich to get richer”
Washington:
Superstar singer Madonna was censored on Instagram for spreading false information about an alleged COVID-19 cure after sharing clips from a video also re-tweeted by Donald Trump. In her message to 15.4 million followers, Madonna claimed that a proven vaccine had been available for months but was being kept secret “to allow the rich to get richer and the poor and sick to get sicker. “. She attached a video from American doctor Stella Immanuel who hailed hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure against the coronavirus. Various excerpts from Emmanuel’s speech have spread rapidly on the internet in recent days, but hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, has not been proven effective against COVID-19.
“We removed this video for making false claims about COVID-19 remedies and prevention methods,” a spokesperson for the company Facebook, which owns Instagram, told AFP on Wednesday, adding: ” People who have reacted, commented on, or shared this video will see messages directing them to authoritative information about the virus. “
Madonna’s post was removed, but screenshots showed she had previously been blurred by Instagram and tagged “fake news – reviewed by independent fact-checkers” with a link to a page debunking the video.
President Donald Trump tweeted several clips of the video to his 84 million subscribers this week, before the tweets were deleted. His son Donald Trump Jr was temporarily barred from tweeting on Tuesday after he also shared parts of the video.
“No one needs to get sick. This virus has a cure – it’s called hydroxychloroquine,” Stella Immanuel exclaimed in the video, standing on the steps of the Washington Supreme Court with medics sharing the same ideas. She also denounced face masks and locks.
Madonna said in May that she had recovered from the coronavirus which forced her to withdraw from concerts in Paris earlier in the year. AFP and other media companies including Reuters and Associated Press are working with Facebook’s fact-checking program, where content classified as false is downgraded on news feeds so fewer people see it .
If someone tries to share such a message, he or she receives an article explaining why the information is not correct.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
