Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the super PAC backing him have filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms, Inc., for election interference after it allegedly shadow banned the documentary “Who is Bobby Kennedy?” on Facebook and Instagram.
American Values 2024 (AV24) announced in a May 13 press release that they have filed the lawsuit in a California district court for violating the First Amendment and “the American people’s fundamental right to a presidential election decided by voters, not by trillion-dollar corporations.”
The complaint alleges that Meta “brazenly” censored speech supportive of Mr. Kennedy, then lied about its actions.
According to the complaint, Meta “sent users messages threatening to suspend their accounts or otherwise punish them if they sought to watch, share or even post a link to the film. And they made good on these threats, disabling and suspending users who did so.”
In addition, the complaint says that Meta stated that the film contained improper sexual or violent content.
When users attempted to comment, those comments were removed, the complaint alleges.
“Under the Support and Advocacy Clause of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, private companies and their officers and employees cannot in concert seek to prevent by force, threat or intimidation any citizen from engaging lawful speech supporting or advocating the election of a presidential candidate,” the complaint says.
After AV24 released the documentary, it began trending on X. However, Facebook and Instagram—both Meta-owned—allegedly suppressed “the organic reach of content they don’t want to spread,” the PAC said in a May 6 press release.
The film was also labeled with a COVID-19 vaccine disclaimer that referred users to other sources such as the Center for Disease Control’s website, the complaint said.
In response to The Epoch Times’ request for comment on the allegation last week, a spokesperson for Meta stated, “The link was mistakenly blocked and was quickly restored once the issue was discovered.”
In response to a request for an updated comment on the allegation of election interference in the lawsuit, a Meta spokesperson repeated the above statement.
‘Implausible’
AV24 said in its lawsuit that Meta’s claim of accidental censorship is “implausible on its face” and contradicts “the numerous messages users received from Meta offering other, equally implausible explanations.”
The documentary film, released May 3, is narrated by actor Woody Harrelson. The film is a biography of Mr. Kennedy aimed at providing a look into who he is as opposed to how mainstream media portray him.
It begins with Mr. Kennedy quoting from various media reports that paint him as a “mentally disturbed” conspiracy theorist instead of an environmental attorney who took on corporate malfeasance.
It discusses how he went after the pharmaceutical industry after meeting with mothers who believed vaccines injured their children.
“Right now big oil funds the Republicans, Big Tech funds the Democrats, Big Pharma and the military contractors make sure to donate to both,” Mr. Kennedy said.
“Who is liberal now and who is conservative? Who’s left and who’s right? These labels make less and less sense. I’ve been fighting corporate corruption for 40 years. I know how they work. I know how to clean them up. And that’s why I’m running for president.”
The lawsuit referenced what it calls Meta’s “different agenda, tilting the playing field in favor of, at the behest of, and in collusion with the current Administration.” The alleged collusion between Meta and the Biden administration is documented in the Murthy v. Missouri case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The legal complaint also referenced a recent Congressional report entitled “The Censorship-Industrial Complex: How top Biden White House officials coerced Big Tech to censor Americans, true information, and critics of the Biden Administration.”
“With extensive quotation from internal Facebook emails and other documents, the report describes in detail ‘collusion’ between Facebook and the White House eventually resulting in an agreement by Facebook pursuant to which the platform would and did implement censorship policies suppressing critics of the Administration, particularly critics of its COVID policies, specifically including Mr. Kennedy,” the complaint says.
AV24’s co-founder Tony Lyons said that polls show 20 percent of Americans aren’t aware that Mr. Kennedy is running for president, while another 30 percent have been fed misinformation about him and his policies.
“Reaching those voters could change the outcome of the 2024 election,” Mr. Lyons said. “How are people supposed to find out that they have a viable alternative candidate—that they don’t have to vote for the lesser of two evils—when Meta is colluding with the Biden administration to block key channels for communicating with the American public?”
‘It Works’
Jay Carson, former advisor to President Bill Clinton and now to Mr. Kennedy, produced the film.
He stated in the documentary that during campaigns, big corporations hire writers in media like him to attack those who challenge their power.
“Here is the way the playbook works: First they attack you broadly and they question your facts,” he said.
“They say you’re lying and it’s ferocious. But if you keep on moving after that, they move on to character assassination. They take on who you are as a person. They dig up everything bad in your past and leak it to the press.”
If this doesn’t work, Mr. Carson said, “they say you’re a liar.”
If liar doesn’t work, they call their target an anti-semite and a racist.
“No two slurs in America are worse than those,” Mr. Carson said. “No slur, except crazy. Crazy, or kook, or crank, or nutjob are their mainstays. That’s their nuclear option.
“If they can get everyone to dismiss you as a wacko nutjob, everything you say is suspect and then they can get back to selling whatever thing it is you said might not be safe. And here’s the thing: It works.”
