Robert Kennedy Jr., a Democratic candidate for the 2024 United States presidential election, revealed that his account is till banned from Instagram and accused the tech giant of preventing him from accessing the site, despite him being a contender for the White House.
This makes him the only 2024 US presidential candidate that’s unable to post to the influential social media platform and currently being subjected to direct Big Tech censorship.
Former President Donald Trump, who is running for president in 2024 as a Republican candidate, was suspended from Instagram on January 6, 2023 and banned on January 7. However, his ban was lifted on January 25, 2023.
The other 2024 presidential candidates, Joe Biden (D), Marianne Williamson (D), Larry Elder (R), Nikki Haley (R), Asa Hutchinson (R), Vivek Ramaswamy (R), and Corey Stapleton (R), all have active Instagram accounts.
Kennedy was banned from Instagram in February 2021 for violating the platform’s strict speech rules related to the coronavirus and vaccines. The ban came after several Democratic senators and 12 state attorneys general demanded that Kennedy and other Covid vaccine skeptics be deplatformed by Big Tech. Before the ban, Kennedy had over 800,000 Instagram followers.
Instagram’s failure to reinstate Kennedy since announcing his presidential campaign means that he won’t be able to directly post his message to the social media platform’s sizeable audience of two billion monthly active users.
