How to get unbanned from Instagram: Run for president
It turns out there's one really simple way to avoid an Instagram ban: Run for president.
On Sunday, Instagram lifted its ban on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy theorist who has a penchant for spreading misinformation about vaccines. He rose to fame not for being the son of U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy or the nephew of president John F. Kennedy but for fueling dangerous misinformation about COVID-19. As NPR reported in 2022, the spread of COVID-19 misinformation — which was and is often politically motivated — worsened the already devastating death toll.
Kennedy said vaccines were linked to autism — a harmful and false claim that has been debunked time and time again — and compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany.
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"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 Meta said in a statement to CNN. According to The Washington Post, his return to the platform will also give him access to his 772,000 followers.
Kennedy was originally "permanently" banned in February 2021 for repeatedly sharing and posting "debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines." His Facebook account remained active throughout all of this. Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, so that's kind of weird. But now he's running for the Democratic presidential nomination, so who cares!
After announcing he would be running for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, Kennedy said he couldn't make a new Instagram account. "Can anyone guess why that’s happening?" he tweeted at the time. (Kennedy is unlikely to win the nomination, as current President Joe Biden is running for reelection.)
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Running for office seems to be the easiest way to get back on Instagram after you've been kicked off the platform for violating its rules. As CNN reported, Meta has been consistent in allowing candidates to use its platforms to reach voters — whether those candidates break the rules or not. Former President Donald Trump was also reinstated after it was clear he was running for president again in 2024.
This comes at a time in which Meta is struggling — as they always are with something. Meta has begun tests on its social media platforms that will limit some users and publishers from viewing and sharing some news content in Canada after the country proposed a bill that would require Meta and other platforms to pay Canadian news outlets for the content that they put on the social media sites. It had basically the same reaction to a similar bill in California.
It is pretty devastating to reinstate presidential candidates' Instagram accounts when they have routinely proven that they are not responsible enough to be in charge of a social media platform — while also threatening to ban news on the site.
Christianna Silva is a senior culture reporter covering social platforms and the creator economy, with a focus on the intersection of social media, politics, and the economic systems that govern us. Since joining Mashable in 2021, they have reported extensively on meme creators, content moderation, and the nature of online creation under capitalism.
Before joining Mashable, they worked as an editor at NPR and MTV News, a reporter at Teen Vogue and VICE News, and as a stablehand at a mini-horse farm. You can follow her on Bluesky @christiannaj.bsky.social and Instagram @christianna_j.
