Facebook owner Meta said Thursday he had sacked one of the most influential US anti-vaccination groups from the social media network for spreading Covid-19 misinformation.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD), which has been critical of Covid vaccines, immediately accused Meta of suppressing their rights to free speech.
“Facebook is acting here as a proxy for the federal government’s crusade to silence all criticism of draconian government policies,” CHD founder Robert Kennedy Jr., nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy, said in a press release.
Meta spokesman Aaron Simpson told AFP that the group’s Facebook and Instagram accounts were shut down on Wednesday. The ban came after repeated violations of Meta’s misinformation rules.
CHD said its social media accounts are being followed by hundreds of thousands of people, and claimed Meta’s action came as a surprise.
In a release, the group shared a screenshot with Messages stating that the accounts were banned for violating meta-policies related to “misinformation that could cause real-world harm.”
CHD claimed the ban could be related to a lawsuit it had filed against Meta, accusing the tech giant of violating free speech rights by referring to the US Centers for Disease Control over the scientific supported information on Covid-19.
The anti-vaccine group has appealed a lower court ruling in the lawsuit, according to legal filings.
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