Christian Smith
NEW YORK, May 13 (Reuters) – Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr and a super PAC supporting him filed a lawsuit on Monday against Facebook parent company Meta Platforms. (META.O)claiming the tech giant interfered in the election after blocking a political advertisement.
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco federal court by Kennedy and super PAC American Values 2024, which paid for the ad, a 30-minute video about Kennedy’s life, says Meta censored the video, removing it and blocking users on their platforms from watching, sharing or posting a link to it.
Meta owns the Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp platforms.
The suit claims that Meta began censoring the May 3 video “within minutes” and cited a statement from Meta on May 5 that said the video was no longer being censored. The lawsuit states that the film is still blocked from users.
“The defendants appear to believe that they can, with legal impunity, issue threats to their users and use their vast powers of censorship, account suspension, and deplatforming to favor or target the presidential candidate of their choice,” the lawsuit stated.
Meta declined to comment on the lawsuit.
A Meta spokesperson said in a statement last week: “The link was blocked in error and was quickly restored once the issue was discovered.”
After the ad was blocked, Kennedy and many others took to social media to criticize what they saw as an injustice. Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform X, reposted the video on X, saying it was “worth watching.”
The video, called “Who Is Bobby Kennedy” and narrated by actor Woody Harrelson, is a 30-minute dive into Kennedy’s life, his famous family and the media’s “eccentric” perception of him. It highlights Kennedy’s experience as an environmental lawyer and his fear of a “rushed” coronavirus vaccine, along with skepticism surrounding the effectiveness of pandemic-era lockdowns.
Kennedy, which was banned in the past from Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL.O), Meta’s YouTube and Instagram, for spreading misinformation about vaccines as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, reject the anti-vaccine label, saying vaccines should have more rigorous testing.
A Facebook post by Kennedy in which he shares the video has about 10,000 “likes.” The same post on social media platform X has around 84,000 “likes”.
Kennedy, who is challenging former Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden for the White House in November, could win 8% of voters nationwide, a number The March Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.
Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; Editing by Leslie Adler
