Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promoted an initiative to track allegations of social media censorship of his campaign and its initiatives on Sunday.
“People attempting to post Kennedy links on FB/Meta and Youtube/Google are getting censored with messages about ‘violating community standards,’ ‘spam,’ ‘misinformation,’ etc,” RFK Jr. wrote on X.
RFK Jr. has long claimed Meta has censored his campaign and sued the social media company after Instagram and Facebook blocked a 30-minute ad of his for several hours in May. Meta admitted it had “mistakenly blocked” the ad after it was incorrectly flagged as spam.
Now, his campaign is asking supporters to self-report instances of censorship at kennedycensored.com. His campaign says it has received more than 600 reports across all platforms so far.
But at least some of those reports appear attributable to user error.
One anonymous claimant on Tuesday reported censorship from Meta after posting information about the late Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated while running for office, and how “ALEJANDRO WILL NOT ALLOW HIM SECRET SERVICE”—a reference to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas determining that Secret Service protection for RFK Jr. is “not warranted at this time.”
“I turned off computer after it started ringing like an alar[m],” the person claimed.
Under the “rejection reason” the person continued to allege a computer issue that sounded unlike any form of known Meta censorship.
“Microsoft said I got hacked but they also said the computer wouldn’t work ever again if I powered down…” they wrote.
Another person named Amy twice reported that a video she posted of RFK Jr. was not shared to her audience because “FB changed my privacy setting from ‘friends’ to ‘private’.” She separately reported that the post had “Removed Image/Video from Story,” though the screenshot provided contained the article’s image.
One person complained that the only person who had liked a post he shared promoting RFK Jr. was his wife.
“The only ‘shares’ and ‘like’ is by my wife,” he wrote, adding: “I believe their algorithms severely restrict who sees the post.”
At least one other person reported an instance of purported censorship that had nothing to do with RFK Jr. or his campaign.
That person said their account on an unstated platform was banned in 2020 after “trying to tell anyone on Facebook that BLM is evil, Antifa was evil, only Jesus, Gods love can heal this hate.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to the Kennedy campaign for comment.
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