Facebook froze Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s page for breaching its policy against spreading COVID-19 disinformation, the company reported Saturday.
According to Reuters, Maduro promoted a “miracle” cure that he believed would cure the coronavirus, but the medical community has not confirmed those claims.
Facebook also deleted a video in which Maduro promoted Carvativir, a homeopathic cure derived from thyme.
Maduro has previously described the solution as “miracle drops” and a “medical breakthrough.”
Healthcare professionals in Venezuela also labeled Maduro’s statements that Carvatavir can treat the coronavirus as “harmful.”
This isn’t the first time Maduro has made misleading statements about coronavirus therapies on social media.
Twitter deleted one of Maduro’s tweets last March that supported a “brew” that he falsely said could “eliminate the infectious genes” of COVID-19.
The removal occurred amid Twitter’s policy of not deleting tweets from world leaders unless they expressly violated its other laws.
Facebook has attempted, with varying degrees of success, to tackle the dissemination of coronavirus misinformation during the pandemic, enacting policies requiring the removal of posts that may result in “imminent physical harm.”
The policy was extended to include the elimination of misleading claims regarding COVID-19 vaccines, such as conspiracy theories and false statements about the vaccines’ safety and side effects.
It also labeled posts with incorrect coronavirus information and directed users to appropriate information from trustworthy medical sources.
In an email to The Verge on Saturday, a Facebook spokesperson stated that the company follows World Health Organization guidelines, which state that there is no cure for the coronavirus.
“We are also freezing the page for 30 days, during which it will be read-only, due to repeated breaches of our rules.”
