meta
The company that owns Facebook, Meta, announced on Thursday that it had banned one of the most powerful anti-vaccination organisations in the US for distributing false information on the Covid-19 virus. The Children's Health Defense (CHD), a group that has opposed Covid vaccinations, instantly charged that Meta was limiting its right to free speech. Robert Kennedy Jr., the founder of CHD and the nephew of the late president John F. Kennedy, stated in a news release that "Facebook is acting here as a surrogate for the federal government's crusade to suppress all criticism of draconian government policies."
The group's Facebook and Instagram profiles were deleted on Wednesday, according to a spokesperson for Meta named Aaron Simpson who talked to AFP. Multiple violations of Meta's disinformation guidelines led to the ban.
Thousands of people, according to CHD, follow its social media pages, therefore the action by Meta apparently caught them off guard.
The organisation published a screen image of messages claiming that the accounts had been suspended for breaking Meta's rules against "misinformation that could harm actual people in the real world."
CHD argued that the suspension might be connected to a lawsuit it filed against Meta, charging the tech giant with violating free speech rights by relying on the US Centers for Disease Control to determine the scientific validity of Covid-19 information.
According to court documents, the anti-vaccine group has appealed a lower court decision that was made against it in the case.
According to poll data released on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, US youths have abandoned Facebook in large numbers over the past seven years in favour of YouTube and TikTok. While Google-run TikTok has "emerged as a leading social media tool for US youths,"
According to the report's authors, YouTube "stands out as the most popular site used by youths."
The release of Pew's research coincides with Meta, the owner of Facebook, engaging TikTok in a social media turf war in an effort to retain as many people as possible for its multi-billion dollar ad-driven business.
According to the data, 95 percent of the kids polled claimed to use YouTube, as opposed to 67 percent who claimed to use TikTok. Just 32% of the kids surveyed admitted to using Facebook, a significant decline from the 71 percent who indicated they did so in a survey of a similar nature seven years prior.
