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Nicole Shanahan, former wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin and running mate to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has publicly criticized Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over supposed censorship of a new documentary about Kennedy. In a post on her X account, she slammed Zuckerberg’s alleged restriction of the documentary, claiming it to be a cowardly act. Zuckerberg, who is known for his mixed martial arts training, is the head of Meta, the parent company of the popular social networking platforms Facebook and Instagram.
The disputed issue relates to issues faced by Facebook and Instagram users who attempted to upload the short documentary about Kennedy’s candidature but were unable to do so. Meta later stated that the documentary’s blockage was an unintentional error that occurred due to it being incorrectly flagged as spam. The blocking occurred for several hours before the video was accessible again.
Following this, Tony Lyons of the super PAC American Values 2024 stated his intent to sue Meta for alleged violation of the First Amendment rights. Lyons argued that censorship of political content deprives the public from accessing candidate-specific information, leaving them susceptible to misinformation from corrupt sources.
The thirty-minute documentary, featuring narration from actor Woody Harrelson and production by Jay Carson, former aide to Hillary Clinton, also elicited strong reactions from supporters of Kennedy who claimed it was a breach of election norms.
Kennedy, the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy, was originally a Democrat but deviated from mainstream party stances due to his controversial views on vaccines. His presidential bid is expected to impact votes for both President Joe Biden and ex-President Donald Trump. According to a recent poll by The Hill, Trump leads Biden by 1.1% when Kennedy’s candidacy is taken into account, with Kennedy securing third place with 8.5% of the vote.
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