Robert Kennedy Jr’s anti-vaccine group suspended from Instagram and Facebook

Instagram and Facebook have suspended the anti-vaccine group led by Robert Kennedy Jr. for violating both platform’s rules about misinformative toward COVID-19.

The most influential anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), has been suspended for spreading misleading claims about vaccines and pandemic-related measures. Robert Kennedy Jr, the leader of the group, has attracted some controversy over the last year for sharing misinformation, which later led to him being booted from Instagram in 2021. 

Both misinformation experts and public health advocates have been very critical of Facebook for not acting on the potentially harmful misinformation being spread about COVID-19 and vaccines.

“We removed these accounts for repeatedly violating our policies,” Facebook and Instagram said in a statement.

“Today’s step is too late and too little. It even leaves up RFK Jr’s public Facebook page. In addition, both JFK Jr and CHD remain active on Twitter, showing how inadequate the Whac-A-Mole approach is to conspiracy campaigns. Instead platforms must address the algorithms and other design loopholes that allow their sites to be weaponized in the first place,” said Karen Kornbluh, the Director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative, per The Guardian. 

It didn’t take long for Robert Kennedy Jr to release a statement regarding suspension, comparing the actions Facebook took as an example of future government censorship. “Facebook is acting here as a surrogate for the federal government’s crusade to silence all criticism of draconian government policies,” he said.

During the time of the suspension, Children’s Health Defense had hundreds to thousands of followers, according to a statement made by the organization. The Guardian reported that several state affiliates of Children’s Health Defense remain on Facebook and Instagram despite the ban of the national organization.