Instagram Lifts Ban on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Instagram has lifted a two-year ban on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s account now that he is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“As he is now an active candidate for president of the United States, we have restored access to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s, Instagram account,” Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Instagram parent company Meta, said in a Sunday statement, first reported by The Washington Post. 

Kennedy Jr. was banned from Instagram in 2021 for violating the social media platform’s Covid-19 policies. The Democratic politician and nephew of the late president John F. Kennedy is a vocal critic of Covid vaccines and pandemic-era lockdown measures.

His account was originally removed for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines. Kennedy’s nonprofit group Children’s Health Defense was later banned for spreading “medical misinformation.” The latter ban will remain in place.

Instagram’s decision follows Kennedy Jr. taking to Twitter last week and saying he could not set up Instagram accounts for his campaign as they were slapped with an immediate 180-day ban.

Meta said they fixed the “issue” preventing Kennedy Jr. from creating a new account. 

Kennedy Jr. is still polling far behind President Joe Biden, but his campaign did secure the support of 20 percent of registered Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters in a recent CNN poll. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently endorsed the underdog candidate and new Twitter head Elon Musk is hosting a Twitter Spaces event with the Democrat on Monday.