Instagram and Facebook suspended Children’s Health Defense this week after the anti-vaccine group led by Robert Kennedy Jr. repeatedly violated rules prohibiting misinformation about COVID-19.
A nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense is one of the most influential anti-vaccine organizations active on social media, where it has spread misleading claims about vaccines and other public health measures designed to control the pandemic.
In a statement, Kennedy compared Facebook’s actions to government censorship, even though Facebook is a private company that can set and enforce its own rules about misinformation.
“Facebook is acting here as a surrogate for the federal government’s crusade to silence all criticism of draconian government policies,” Kennedy said.
Children’s Health Defense had hundreds of thousands of followers at the time of the suspension, according to a statement from the organization, which also noted that it has sued Facebook over its moderation policies.
Public health advocates and misinformation experts have criticized Facebook for not acting more swiftly to contain potentially harmful misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines.
Karen Kornbluh, director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund, said too many groups like Children’s Health Defense have been allowed to flourish on social media for too long. She noted that the group remains on Twitter.
“Today’s step is too late and too little,” Kornbluh said, adding that tech companies must address the reasons misinformation spreads so readily on social media.
Facebook and Instagram confirmed the company action on Thursday in a statement to The Associated Press.
“We removed these accounts for repeatedly violating our policies,” a spokesman for Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, told the AP. Under the platforms’ policies, suspensions are typically only enforced after multiple violations.
Several state affiliates of Children’s Health Defense remain on Facebook and Instagram despite the ban of the national organization. Kennedy was kicked off Instagram last year but continues to keep an active account on Facebook.
(AP)
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4 Responses
“…where it has spread misleading claims about vaccines and other public health measures designed to control the pandemic.”
More Big-Pharma-sponsored yellow journalism.
The CDC has now walked back its ‘covid advisories’ that have caused what is projected as currently about 10,000 ‘c19 vaccine’ adverse effects deaths per day.
Facebook/Meta’s Zuckerberg has been implicated in massive election fraud that resulted in Resident Biden now illicitly occupying the White House, and all of these people are running to the bank with vaccine and other dangerous pharma ‘remedy’ patent and production money at taxpayer expense, while people who depend on responsible government directives suffer medical adverse affects under tyrannical dictates and ‘covid regulations’.
JFK, Jr. is one of the few of this generation that’s getting it right – and doing something about it as well. Watch his debate with the criminal big Pharma lawyer Alan Dershowitz, for instance, and understand why we must stand up to bad government legislature and not support Facebook and other MSM (Mainstream Media) narratives about ‘Covid’ or much else.
Karen. Hahahahahaha
Lastword, as usual, being a complete nutcase. Not a single word out of his keyboard bears any relationship to reality.
But it is ironic that after more than a decade of these platforms allowing RFK and his crazy crew to spread the most outrageous lies about vaccines, encouraging parents to put their children in danger and deserve to lose custody, they suddenly draw the line the first time they come close to saying something true!
Milhouse, have you ever read a word RFK jr. wrote? Or better yet have you ever seen the bumbling brainfart that comes from the “fact checkers” who “debunk” his “misinformation”? Open a book before you continue spouting old propaganda and stale talking points. Thank you.