Coronavirus: Twitter removes Rajinikanth’s video

Twitter on Saturday night removed a video posted by Tamil superstar Rajinikanth, in which he says that the spread of COVID-19 can be prevented if people don’t step out for 14 hours, for violating its rules.

The action by the micro-blogging site came after several Twitter users “reported” the tweet saying Rajinikanth’s claims were “misleading” and would send a wrong message to the people on preventing spread of coronavirus.

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The video was removed from the Twitter page of Rajinikanth, who is followed by 5.7 million people, at around 8 pm on Saturday, four hours after it was posted. Twitter said the tweet violated its rules in its explanation for removing the video.

However, the YouTube link for the video was part of the tweet till the time of going to press. The tweet was liked by 10,500 people and retweeted by more than 3,600 Twitter users.

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In the video, Rajinikanth had said that COVID-19 spread can be prevented if people don’t step out for 14 hours. He also added this was the reason Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called for a 14-hour self-imposed curfew in the country.

“Right now, India is in the second stage of battling the coronavirus and we can’t let it go to the third level. If we can prevent the spread of the COVID-19 in public spaces for 12 to 14 hours, that is enough to stop it from progressing to the third stage,” the actor had said.

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Several Twitter users slammed Rajinikanth for making “misleading claims” on prevention of COVID-19 and asked the micro-blogging site to remove it since the actor has millions of followers.