The Disinformation Dozen
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
How long will it take Facebook and Instagram to enforce their own policies on these documented, repeat offenders?
On February 8, 2021, Facebook announced another update to their policies to address COVID-19 and vaccine disinformation and misinformation on their platforms.
Shortly after this announcement, anti-vaxx industry leader Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Instagram account was banned for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines” according to a Facebook spokesperson.
Kennedy’s Facebook account, which has over 300,000 followers, remains active and continues to violate Facebook’s stated policies in both posted content and Facebook Live video appearances.
Facebook’s policy states that “Groups, Pages and accounts on Facebook and Instagram that repeatedly share these debunked claims may be removed altogether.” Since January, Kennedy’s Facebook Page has violated policies no less than 7 times, which would seem to rise to the threshold for removal based on repeated sharing.
Examples of Violations
A debunked claim that Hank Aaron’s death was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths” remains available with a “missing context” label, despite the Medical Examiner confirming no association.
In violation of Facebook’s policy against discouraging people from getting government-approved COVID tests, the article in this post makes false claims about PCR tests.
Kennedy repeatedly posts VAERS data and articles that he insinuates connect COVID vaccines to deaths.
The Disinformation Dozen
Guy Rosen, who oversees content decisions recently told the Guardian “[Facebook] will begin enforcing this policy immediately, with a particular focus on Pages, groups and accounts that violate these rules.”
Based on reports from The Center for Countering Digital Hate and other organizations that have been monitoring the activities and growth of anti-vaxx pages and groups, the disinformation dozen is a list of some of the most frequent violators of Facebook’s new (and old) policies.
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