Advertisement
Tech

Anti-vax group sues Facebook for labeling it misinformation

Zuckerberg and three fact-checking groups are named as defendants.

Photo of Andrew Wyrich

Andrew Wyrich

Children's Health Defense Facebook Vaccination Lawsuit

An anti-vaccination group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is suing Facebook and three fact-checking partners for putting a warning label on its page and rejecting ads it wanted to run.

Featured Video

Children’s Health Defense filed its complaint in the United States District Court Northern District of California on Monday. It names Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Science Feedback, the Poynter Institute, and PolitiFact as defendants.

Currently, Children’s Health Defense’s Facebook page has a large banner at the top that reads “this page posts about vaccines” and links users to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website regarding vaccines. As the CDC notes, vaccinations are imperative to keeping numerous diseases eradicated.

The Children’s Health Defense League is steadfastly against vaccinations, and a recent post on its Facebook page says it will sue the University of California over its mandatory flu vaccination policy.

Advertisement
Children's Health Defense Facebook
Facebook

Last year, Facebook said it was limiting anti-vaccination content as a way to “tackle vaccine misinformation.” As part of this, the social media giant said anti-vaccine content could not be promoted through ads and it would label pages that share that content.

That decision is at the heart of Children’s Health Defense’s lawsuit. It claims that its page was “false denigrated” by the label.

The suit also argues that “an officer and an agency within the U.S. government ‘privatized’ the First Amendment by teaming up with Facebook to censor speech.”

Advertisement

Throughout the suit, Children’s Health Defense notes numerous times that its posts have also been flagged by fact-checkers and labeled as containing false information and that Facebook rejected ads from them for containing “false information” about vaccines.


Read more of the Daily Dot’s tech and politics coverage

Nevada’s GOP secretary of state candidate follows QAnon, neo-Nazi accounts on Gab, Telegram
Court filing in Bored Apes lawsuit revives claims founders built NFT empire on Nazi ideology
EXCLUSIVE: ‘Say hi to the Donald for us’: Florida police briefed armed right-wing group before they went to Jan. 6 protest
Inside the Proud Boys’ ties to ghost gun sales
‘Judas’: Gab users are furious its founder handed over data to the FBI without a subpoena
EXCLUSIVE: Anti-vax dating site that let people advertise ‘mRNA FREE’ semen left all its user data exposed
Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.
 
The Daily Dot