Madonna performs onstage during the 2019 Billboard Music Awards. (Kevin Mazur/Getty)
Madonna has been flagged for spreading “false information” on Instagram after she shared the same coronavirus conspiracy video that got Donald Trump Jr suspended from Twitter.
The Queen of Pop shared a video of the controversial anti-LGBT+ doctor Stella Immanuel, whom she described as her “hero”. Immanuel believes, among many other outlandish ideas, that people get sick because of sex with demons who talk about coronavirus.
The video showed Immanuel supporting Trump’s baseless claim that hydroxychloroquine should be used to treat coronavirus. The FDA has warned that the drug carries dangerous side effects and is not an effective treatment for COVID-19.
“The truth will set us all free! But some people don’t want to hear the truth,” Madonna wrote in her caption, also claiming that authorities were hiding the cure for the coronavirus.
The post appeared blurred with a “False Information” warning over the video. The text from Instagram continued: “Reviewed by independent fact-checkers.”
When users clicked further, they were shown a list of falsehoods in Madonna’s post. Fact-checkers note that there is not yet a cure for COVID-19 and that the drug hydroxychloroquine is not a cure, as Immanuel claims.
Unfortunately this isn’t the first bizarre coronavirus announcement we’ve seen from the star: earlier this year she delivered a surreal monologue about the pandemic being a “great equaliser” while sitting in a bubble bath strewn with rose petals.
Her soapy sermon remained on Instagram despite attracting criticism, but her latest post now appears to have been removed altogether.
The social media platform started flagging content for inaccuracies late last year as part of the social app’s commitment to “reducing the spread of false information”.
Twitter has begun doing the same, and yesterday the president’s son was suspended for posting a tweet in which he declared the video of Stella Immanuel a “must watch”.
The video was retweeted by the president himself and was also boosted by a string of right-wing figures. It has been pulled down from Twitter and also removed from Facebook for violating COVID-19 misinformation policies, but only after it racked up millions of views between the two websites.