Children's Health Defense, a group founded by vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, is suing Facebook and its fact-checking partners (a new Facebook and Instagram option that blocks posting if it contains false news). This lawsuit is being filed because of the opposition that this organization has had, to advertisements for vaccines and 5G networks. The lawsuit was filed against Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerbeg, as well as three fact-checking organizations: PolitiFact, Science Feedback and Poynter Institure.
Kennedy was one of the key figures in targeting Facebook's "clean-up" of anti-vaccine ads before the platform launched vaccine ads and stopped recommending anti-vaccine sites.
As part of this effort, Facebook posted a note on the Children's Health Defense (CHD) website saying, "This page posts about vaccines" and disabled the organization's ability to raise funds. The lawsuit alleges that "fact-checkers" censored many of the organisation's posts, leading to a 95% reduction in site (user) traffic.
CHD says Facebook is trying to show that Kennedy's organization is unreliable and promotes inaccurate scientific claims, and that vaccines are usually safe, effective, and extremely beneficial. The organization does not share the same views on this.
Many conservative politicians have claimed that Facebook and other social media platforms display political bias and several failed lawsuits have been filed on this basis, but the CHD case promises more efforts to stop Facebook, Twitter and Google from having “this kind of censorship ".
Social networking platforms have long struggled to stop fake news, especially scientific ones, from spreading on the internet, but as always it is difficult to have a complete filtering and there will always be dissatisfaction from users.
Source: The Verge
