Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just revealed that Instagram is not letting him set up a campaign account.
Kennedy is one of President Joe Biden's top Democratic rivals in the Democratic Party's 2024 presidential primary.
To be clear, Real Clear Politics has Biden, on average, beating Kennedy by 42.5 percentage points in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary. But, Kennedy, recently, has been gaining momentum. And, it has been looking more and more as though he could be one of the few Democratic candidates who can actually challenge Biden.
So, why is Instagram not letting Kennedy set up a campaign account?
On Thursday, Kennedy posted the following message on Twitter:
Interesting… when we use our TeamKennedy email address to set up @instagram accounts we get an automatic 180-day ban. Can anyone guess why that’s happening? pic.twitter.com/0G8oRnoXTv
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 2, 2023
At the time of this writing, Facebook, which owns Instagram, has not posted a statement on the matter.
But, it appears that the ban might relate to the fact that Kennedy's personal Instagram account was banned, during the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically in February 2021, for "repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines."
Times, of course, have changed a lot since then. But, somehow Kennedy has still not been cleared.
In a follow-up tweet, Kennedy blasted the ban as "profoundly undemocratic."
To silence a major political candidate is profoundly undemocratic. Social media is the modern equivalent of the town square. How can democracy function if only some candidates have access to it?
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 2, 2023
Elon Musk, Twitter's new owner, responded by asking Kennedy whether he would like to do a Twitter Spaces discussion with Musk this week. Kennedy responded in the affirmative. But, the official date and time for the event have yet to be announced.
This is Musk's latest attempt to provide a platform for political candidates - a platform different from those of the mainstream media and of Big Tech, which are anything but apolitical.
The last Twitter Spaces event of this nature featured Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). It was actually how DeSantis decided to officially announce his 2024 presidential campaign. The event was marred by technical difficulties and may have done more to hurt than to help DeSantis's campaign. We will have to see if Kennedy's Twitter Spaces event fares any better than DeSantis's.
