Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and three fact-checking companies are now being sued by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) for censoring a number of posts related to public health and shadow banning the Facebook page of CHD.
The lawsuit filed against the Big Tech social media giant and its fact-checkers, Science Feedback, Poynter Institute, and Politifact, in the San Francisco Federal Court, claims that factually accurate public health posts were purposefully censored by Facebook.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
CHD is a non-profit group and watchdog that says it exposes any corruption or misconduct in public health agencies such as the CDC and the WHO, telecom companies, and pharmaceutical companies.
CHD’s main concerns are that Facebook is invested in 5G telecom and is therefore censoring rightful information about the health concerns of 5G and vaccinations expressed on its platform. What’s more, CHD also accuses Facebook of having conflicts with a few pharma companies as well as their health regulators.
While Facebook acknowledges that it is censoring the information in alignment with CDC and WHO, the nonprofit argues that censoring its posts in collaboration with the government is a violation of the First Amendment.
Apart from censoring CHD’s posts, Facebook, even “shadow banned” the organization’s Facebook page by even deactivating its donate button. It is worth noting that the lawsuit alleges that most of the posts being censored or shadow banned are critical of government policies, pharma companies, and vaccinations at large.
The lawsuit argues that censoring any content that criticises government policies, especially when it is private speech, invariably is a First Amendment violation.
(Lawsuits that have made this claim against Big Tech companies in the past have failed.)
CHD also says that it is protected from false disparagement through the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, RICO, and the Lanham Act.
(Lawsuits that have made this claim against Big Tech companies in the past have failed.)
As the case proceeds, the court will have to rule if Facebook’s censorship practices and slapping on “warning labels” based on the directions of independent fact-checkers, would be deemed acceptable practices.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the man leading CHD and other anti-vaccination groups primarily responsible for the lawsuit said: “This is an important First Amendment case testing the boundaries of government authority to openly censor unwanted critiques of government policies and pharmaceutical and telecom products on privately owned internet platforms.”
