Instagram has rejected the report by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political opponent and leading anti-vaccine activist, on false information regarding the coronavirus.
“We have removed this account for the repeated sharing of unclaimed claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” Facebook-owned Facebook said in a statement.
Mr Kennedy, the son of former Senator and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, has worked as an environmental advocate for decades, but is now better known as a vaccine crusader. A 2019 study found that two groups, including its nonprofit organization, now called Children’s Health Defense, funded more than half of Facebook ads that spread misinformation about vaccines.
He found an even wider audience during the pandemic on platforms like Instagram, where he had 800,000 followers. Although Mr. Kennedy said he is not against vaccines, as long as it is safe, he regularly endorses discredited links between vaccines and autism, arguing that it is safer to contract the coronavirus than to be vaccinated against it.
Facebook is becoming more aggressive in its efforts to erase misinformation about vaccines and this week said it would remove reports with erroneous allegations about the coronavirus, coronavirus vaccines and vaccinations in general, whether it be paid ads or user-generated posts. In addition to mr. Kennedy’s Instagram account, the company said it removed eight other Instagram accounts and Facebook pages on Wednesday under its updated policy.
They did not include Kennedy’s Facebook page, which was still active early Thursday and had many of the same unfounded claims on more than 300,000 followers. The company said it did not automatically deactivate accounts on its platforms and that there were currently no plans to release Mr. Kennedy’s Facebook account. “
Children’s Health Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Members of the family of mr. Kennedy spoke out against the vaccination against the vaccine, including a brother, sister and niece who accused him of spreading ‘dangerous misinformation’ in a column they wrote for Politico in 2019. Another cousin, Kerry Kennedy Meltzer, a physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital / Weill Cornell Medical Center, wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times in December.
“I love my Uncle Bobby,” she wrote. ‘I admire him for many reasons, including his ten-year struggle for a cleaner environment. But when it comes to vaccines, he is wrong. ”