CHD says the ban came “without warning.” Meta says it followed many violations.
By Ashley Belanger
Senior Policy Reporter
arsTechnica
The anti-vaccine group the Children’s Health Defense celebrated the spread of poliovirus in New York, mocking health officials spreading awareness that polio is vaccine-preventable. Today, CHD reports that the group was also permanently banned from Facebook and Instagram yesterday. A screenshot of Meta’s notification in its press release says that the ban is due to CHD’s practice of spreading “misinformation that could cause physical harm.”
A Meta spokesperson tells Ars that Meta “removed the Instagram and Facebook accounts in question for repeatedly violating our COVID-19 policies.”
CHD says the ban came “without warning,” cutting the anti-vax group off from hundreds of thousands of followers on both social media platforms. Denying allegations that the group spreads misinformation, CHD suggested instead the ban is connected to CHD’s lawsuit against Meta that questions the validity of how Facebook and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention label health misinformation. The group’s legal counsel in that lawsuit, Roger Teich, suggested that the ban was improper.
“Censorship is not only unconstitutional, it’s un-American,” Teich said in the press release.
CHD founder Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who, as AP reported, likens getting vaccines to “drinking Kool-Aid”—seemed to suggest that Meta was retaliating against CHD on behalf of the CDC: “Facebook is acting here as a surrogate for the federal government’s crusade to silence all criticism of draconian government policies,” Kennedy said in the press release.
READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT ARSTECHNICA
