A super PAC backing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to sue Meta this week, alleging that the parent company to Instagram and Facebook “brazenly” censored a documentary about the candidate.
Meta insists that American Values 2024 is being melodramatic. In a statement to The Daily Beast, a spokesperson said the film was “mistakenly blocked” and that the problem was “quickly resolved” after it was flagged. The company previously told The New York Times that the resolution took at most a few hours.
According to a press release issued by American Values on Monday, many Facebook and Instagram users were unable to share the 30-minute, Woody Harrelson-narrated documentary about the candidate, Who Is Bobby Kennedy?
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“They were notified that there was a problem with the link, which isn’t the case; later, they were informed that the link was removed because it goes against Instagram’s ‘Community Guidelines,’” due to alleged violations related to “spam,” “support or praise of terrorism, organized crime or hate groups,” “solicitation of sexual services,” or the “sale of firearms and drugs,” the statement said.
The film was produced by Jay Carson, who also created The Morning Show on Apple TV+. Carson added in the statement that “political infomercials for presidential candidates have a rich and effective history in American politics” and that his team “set out to make a modern version of that format.”
The super PAC also complained that the film continues to underperform on Meta’s platforms, which it views as evidence that the project is being “shadow banned” even if it is not being blocked outright. In contrast, the statement continued, the video has been viewed more than 12 million times on X.
American Values plans to declare in its lawsuit that Meta’s temporary lapse amounted to a “violation of the First Amendment, of civil rights laws dating back to the Civil War, and of the American people’s fundamental right to a presidential election decided by voters, not by trillion-dollar corporations.”
Kennedy previously sued Google and YouTube over claims that they were censoring his speech, after the platforms removed two videos on the basis of alleged medical misinformation. Last summer, a judge denied his request for a temporary restraining order against the companies. The case remains ongoing.
