The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, has removed from these two platforms the accounts of the influential American anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense (CDH), led by Robert Kennedy Jr, nephew of former President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
“We have deleted the Instagram and Facebook accounts in question for repeated violations of our Covid-19 policies”explained, Thursday, August 18, Aaron Simpson, a spokesperson for Meta.
CDH, which criticizes the safety of vaccines against Covid-19, accuses Meta of not respecting his right to freedom of expression, aligning himself with the American health authorities.
“Facebook is acting here as a representative of the federal government’s crusade to silence any criticism of the government’s draconian policies”said the founder of the organization, Robert Kennedy Jr, a major figure in the American antivax galaxy, in a press release.
A halt to the anti-vaccine galaxy
CDH claims ” hundreds of thousands “ subscribers on these two accounts and shared, in its press release, screenshots showing the deletion of these accounts for ” disinformation “.
According to CDH, the ban could be linked to a lawsuit filed by the organization against Meta, for censorship, in federal court. CDH’s YouTube channel had been removed in September 2021.
Meta, which is regularly criticized for spreading disinformation, has been trying since the 2020 US presidential election to move away from political content to focus on exchanges between relatives and communities of interest.