Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and American Values 2024 (AV24) have filed a lawsuit alleging election interference against Mark Zuckerberg, Meta Platforms, Inc., Facebook Operations, LLC, Instagram, LLC, and John Does.
The lawsuit accuses Meta et. al. of violating Plaintiffs First Amendment rights, “civil rights law dating back to the Civil War,” and “the American people’s fundamental right to a presidential election decided by voters, not by trillion-dollar corporations.”
According to the complaint, Meta brazenly censored “speech by and supportive of Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and lying to the public about it.”
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American Values 2024 released the thirty-minute film, “Who is Bobby Kennedy?” on May 3rd. “Shortly after its release, Who Is Bobby Kennedy began trending on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter,” reads one of the lawsuit’s first bullet points. “Meta, however, censored it, blocking users on its platforms from watching, sharing, or even posting a link to Who Is Bobby Kennedy.”
The complaint further claims that both Facebook and Instagram “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.”
The short film’s original posting has now been viewed more than 100 million times on X, formerly Twitter, but its reach on Instagram and Facebook has been minimal.
The complaint describes Meta censorship as “election interference,” stating, “Defendants seem to believe that they can with legal impunity issue threats to their users and deploy their vast power of censorship, account-suspension, and deplatforming in order to favor or target the presidential candidate of their choice.”
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It further states, “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 in lawful speech supporting or advocating the election of a presidential candidate.”
The complaint argues that Meta’s current censorship must be seen in the context of recent Supreme Court censorship case Murthy v. Missouri. That case reveals “a campaign of unrelenting pressure from the most powerful office in the world” to “bend [social media platforms] to the government’s will.” The district court called this collusion and partnership between the White House government entities and officials and social media platforms “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.”
The complaint further quotes the district court as finding that it was “certainly likely that defendants could use their power over millions of people to suppress alternative views or moderate content they do not agree with in the upcoming 2024 national election.”
Tony Lyons, Co-Founder of AV24, stated the following: “Polls show that 20% of Americans still don’t know that Kennedy is running for president. And as many as 30% more have been misled with respect to his character, his integrity, and the policies that he advocates. Reaching those voters could change the outcome of the 2024 election. 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?”
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Conceived, filmed and produced by Apple TV +’s The Morning Show creator Jay Carson and director Mike Piscitelli, the film tells Kennedy’s story in an eloquent, candid, motivating, and entertaining way. It details how the prevailing narrative about him – “crazy,” “dangerous,” “unhinged” – bears little resemblance to the reality of who he is and the work he’s done as a successful environmental attorney and corruption fighter.
The film is narrated by award-winning actor, Woody Harrelson.
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