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“We deleted this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” a spokesperson for Instagram owner Facebook said in a statement.
Kennedy, the son of former United States Attorney General, United States Senator and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, has spoken out against vaccines on several occasions. He lobbied Congress to give parents exemptions from state requirements that require them to immunize their children. The Always-On Democrat downplays his anti-vaccine views, however, by saying he’s actually in favor of safe vaccines and noting that all of his children have been vaccinated.
Kennedy’s Facebook page, with over 300,000 followers, was still active at the time of publication. The company spokesperson said there were no plans to remove this page “at this time.”
Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit group chaired by Kennedy that expresses skepticism about the health benefits of vaccines, said it could not immediately comment on Instagram’s actions.
Facebook has fought for years to crack down on misinformation about vaccines and announced another effort to do so earlier this week.
On Monday, the company announced several ways to better tackle vaccine misinformation, including making it harder to find accounts through Facebook-owned Instagram searches that discourage people from getting vaccinated.
The announcement comes a day after CNN Business reported that Instagram continues to highlight anti-vaxxer accounts in its search results, while Facebook groups complaining about vaccines remain easy to find. The findings have raised concerns among public health experts, given that the United States is in the middle of its largest vaccine deployment ever to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
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