The social media platform Instagram has permanently removed the account of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for posting false information regarding vaccines and COVID-19.
In a statement Wednesday, Facebook, which owns Instagram, said, “We removed this account for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.”
Kennedy’s Facebook page, which has carried some of same information and has over 300,000 followers, remains active.
Kennedy is the son of the former senator and U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and worked for decades as an environmental lawyer. In recent years, he is better known as an anti-vaccine crusader.
He chairs a nonprofit organization, Children’s Health Defense, which is skeptical about the health benefits of vaccines. Kennedy has lobbied Congress to give parents exemptions from state vaccine requirements for children.
Kennedy has said he is not opposed to vaccines, as long as they are safe, and says he has vaccinated all of his children. Yet, he regularly endorses discredited links between vaccines and autism and has argued that it is safer to contract the coronavirus than to be inoculated against it.
Members of Kennedy’s famous political family have spoken out against his views.