Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta has removed the accounts of influential American anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense (CDH), headed by Robert Kennedy Jr., nephew of former President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, from those two platforms.
“We have deleted the Instagram and Facebook accounts in question for repeated violations of our policies regarding Covid-19,” said Aaron Simpson, a spokesman for Meta, on Thursday, August 18.
Also read: USA: TikTok tightens controls on political content ahead of the midterm elections
The CDH, which criticizes the safety of vaccines against Covid-19, accuses Meta of not respecting his right to freedom of expression and joining the American health authorities.
“Facebook comes here as a representative of the federal government’s crusade to silence any criticism of the government’s draconian policies,” the organization’s founder, Robert Kennedy Jr., a major figure in the US antivax galaxy, said in an explanation.
A stop in the anti-vaccine galaxy
CDH claims “hundreds of thousands” of subscribers on these two accounts and shared screenshots in its press release showing the deletion of these accounts for “disinformation.”
According to the CDH, the ban could be related to a lawsuit brought by the organization against Meta for censorship in federal court. CDH’s YouTube channel was removed in September 2021.
Regularly criticized for spreading disinformation, Meta has been trying to move away from political content and focus on exchanges between loved ones and communities of interest since the 2020 US presidential election.
Also read: Illegal abortion in the US: Facebook criticized for using private messages to ensure justice