The Facebook group for Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom (OAMF), a non-profit that supports legislation that would give people exemptions to vaccine mandates, has been banned from Facebook.
The group had 40,000 members and its President, Stephanie Stock said that Facebook banned the group for sharing mainstream news articles.
OAMF describes itself as an advocate for “your right to choose or refuse any medical treatment or procedure.”
Recently, OAMF has been supporting House Bill 248, the Vaccine Choice & Anti-Discrimination Act. The bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Jennifer Gross, describes it as “legislation that protects individuals who choose not to be vaccinated from discrimination due to vaccine status.”
The removal of this group follows Facebook deleting a 120,000-member group where people shared stories of alleged adverse vaccine reactions last month.
Facebook’s current rules prohibit a wide range of vaccine-related posts including posts claiming vaccines are ineffective, posts claiming vaccines cause blood clots, and posts claiming vaccines change people’s DNA (something Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told his staff during an internal July 2020 meeting).
Facebook also labels any posts discussing the vaccine with “credible information about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines from the World Health Organization.”
The tech giant’s increased censorship and editorialization of posts about vaccines follows pressure from Democratic Party Senators and State Attorneys General who have pushed the company to “address” prominent vaccine skeptics and kill vaccine skepticism.
Before this Facebook censorship, OAMF had its video of legislative testimony before the Ohio senate removed by YouTube in February. The video featured testimony in support of a bill that would allow state lawmakers to vote against the governor’s coronavirus lockdowns but was removed by YouTube for violating its “coronavirus misinformation” policies.
