Facebook, YouTube, Twitter struggle to remove ‘Plandemic’ videos

Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are finding it difficult to remove a coronavirus conspiracy video called Plandemic that has spread faster that the virus and can still be accessed on these platforms.

The 26-minute video features a famous vaccine conspiracist who defy the advice of medical experts like saying that "sheltering in place harms consumers' immune systems and that masks can make people sicker".

"The video tries to argue that the coronavirus pandemic was created to make profits off vaccines," reports CNBC.

The video features Judy Mikovits, a figure best known for her anti-vaccine activism in recent years.

The video on Facebook received more than 1.7 million views as of Thursday and been shared more than 140,000 times.

One of the YouTube videos had received more than 1 million views before it was removed, according to the MIT Technology Review.

According to Twitter, "tweets by Mikovits apparently don't violate the platform's rules around COVID-19 misinformation, but it has marked the video's URL as "unsafe" and blocked the related hashtags.

A Facebook spokeswoman earlier said the video "is eligible for fact-checkers to review and rate."

Later, the spokeswoman said that "Suggesting that wearing a mask can make you sick could lead to imminent harm, so we're removing the video". However, it was still streaming on the platform till late Thursday.

In the video, Mikovits accuses Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of suppressing treatments like hydroxychloroquine - falsely touted by President Donald Trump as a wonder drug to cure coronavirus.