Instagram has eliminated the account of Robert F Kennedy Jr for making false claims about coronavirus and vaccines.
The nephew of late President John F Kennedy had his account completely taken down “for repeatedly sharing debunked claims”, Fb, which owns Instagram, mentioned in an announcement.
His Fb account stays lively regardless of related claims posted there.
These have included linking the dying of legendary baseball participant Hank Aaron to the Covid-19 vaccine.
Fb has vowed to take away false claims about Covid-19 vaccines to forestall “imminent bodily hurt”.
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Mr Kennedy, a lawyer and environmentalist, is the son of late former US lawyer common, senator and presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy.
He chairs Kids’s Well being Protection, a gaggle that expresses scepticism in regards to the well being advantages of vaccines. He additionally campaigned towards the immunisation of measles throughout a resurgence of the an infection.
Talking final 12 months at a convention for the Nationwide Vaccine Info Centre, a controversial group accused of spreading misinformation on vaccines, Mr Kennedy mentioned individuals had been listening to his message and “these seeds are touchdown on very fertile floor”.
He has addressed anti-lockdown protests and his movies are often translated by activists primarily based in different nations.
In December, his niece, Kerry Kennedy Meltzer, a doctor, wrote a bit within the New York Instances entitled: Vaccines Are Protected, No Matter What Robert Kennedy Jr Says.
Too little, too late?
By Olga Robinson, BBC Monitoring
Mr Kennedy’s Instagram account had been a key supply of dangerous details about Covid-19 and vaccines.
However his private account on Fb – with over 300,000 followers – remains to be lively on the platform.
The accounts of Kids’s Well being Protection are additionally nonetheless up on each Instagram and Fb. Mixed they’ve properly over 300,000 followers in whole. And though Instagram has began to take motion towards different accounts spreading deceptive well being data, many nonetheless stay.
For critics of the social media firms, it is going to be additional proof that the tech giants are too sluggish to fight misinformation.
Mr Kennedy, like many different influential figures within the anti-vaccination neighborhood, promoted dangerous science in regards to the coronavirus and vaccines to a whole lot of 1000’s of social media customers all through the pandemic.
Claims echoing his and others’ anti-vaccine narratives now routinely seem in personal Fb teams discussing Covid-19 vaccines – they usually spill over into different boards – all the things from Twitter to household chats on WhatsApp.
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