It turns out there’s one really simple way to avoid an Instagram ban: Run for president.
On Sunday, Instagram lifted its ban on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy theorist who has a penchant for spreading misinformation about vaccines. He rose to fame not for being the son of U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy or the nephew of president John F. Kennedy but for fueling dangerous misinformation about COVID-19. As NPR reported in 2022(opens in a new tab), the spread of COVID-19 misinformation — which was and is often politically motivated — worsened the already devastating death toll.
Kennedy said vaccines were linked to autism — a harmful and false claim that has been debunked time and time again(opens in a new tab) — and compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany(opens in a new tab).
“As he is now an active candidate for president of the United States, we have restored access to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s, Instagram account,” Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta said in a statement to CNN(opens in a new tab). According to The Washington Post(opens in a new tab), his return to the platform will also give him access to his 772,000 followers(opens in a new tab).
Kennedy was originally “permanently” banned(opens in a new tab) in February 2021 for repeatedly sharing and posting “debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines(opens in a new tab).” His Facebook account remained active throughout all of this. Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, so that’s kind of weird. But now he’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination, so who cares!
After announcing he would be running for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, Kennedy said he couldn’t make a new Instagram account. “Can anyone guess why that’s happening?” he tweeted at the time. (Kennedy is unlikely to win the nomination(opens in a new tab), as current President Joe Biden is running for reelection.)
Running for office seems to be the easiest way to get back on Instagram after you’ve been kicked off the platform for violating its rules. As CNN reported, Meta has been consistent in allowing candidates to use its platforms to reach voters — whether those candidates break the rules or not. Former President Donald Trump was also reinstated after it was clear he was running for president again in 2024(opens in a new tab).
This comes at a time in which Meta is struggling — as they always are with something. Meta has begun tests on its social media platforms that will limit some users and publishers from viewing and sharing some news content in Canada after the country proposed a bill(opens in a new tab) that would require Meta and other platforms to pay Canadian news outlets for the content that they put on the social media sites. It had basically the same reaction to a similar bill in California.
It is pretty devastating to reinstate presidential candidates’ Instagram accounts when they have routinely proven that they are not responsible enough to be in charge of a social media platform — while also threatening to ban news on the site.
