YouTube announced on Monday that it took the necessary steps to remove a video of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaking with podcast host Jordan Peterson for spreading what the online video-sharing company said was vaccine misinformation.
The company's decision is the latest challenge that Kennedy Jr. faces amid his continued efforts to seek support for a Democratic presidential run following years of being an anti-vaccine crusader. The taking down of the video comes amid an online tug-of-war between vaccine conspiracy theorists and prominent doctors.
Robert Kennedy Jr.'s YouTube Video Taken Down
In a statement, YouTube removed a video from Peterson's channel for allegedly violating the company's general vaccine misinformation policy. This rule prohibits content alleging that vaccines can cause chronic side effects outside of rare side effects that health authorities recognize.
The podcast host is a right-wing Canadian pundit and psychologist famous for his verbal assaults on feminism and racial diversity. As per NBC News, he recorded the video with Kennedy Jr. for "The Daily Wire," which is a conservative media outlet.
The two men later criticized the video-sharing company for removing their video, which had a duration of roughly 95 minutes. They accused YouTube of interfering with a presidential election campaign.
In a statement posted on Twitter, Kennedy Jr. asked if social media platforms should be allowed to censor presidential candidates. This is not the first time the Democrat lost access to his social media accounts for allegedly spreading health misinformation.
Last year, social media platforms Facebook and Instagram cited the same reason when they opted to suspend Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group that Kennedy Jr founded.
On top of vaccine misinformation, Kennedy Jr. and Peterson's video included a part where the Democratic presidential candidate repeated the infamous conspiracy theory that chemicals in water were "turning frogs gay," a claim that was made popular by Alex Jones, a now-convicted conspiracy theorist, according to the Independent.
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Allegedly Spreading Misinformation
Kennedy Jr. took the conspiracy theory up a notch by saying that the chemicals in the water were also the reason that some people were transgender. During the interview, the presidential candidate said that many problems seen in kids, particularly boys, mainly come from chemical exposure, including gender dysphoria.
He continued to say that kids were "swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals" that included "endocrine disruptors." He added that the water supply contains atrazine, which he said is capable of castrating and forcefully feminizing frogs that swim in it.
Kennedy Jr. noted that 10% of these male frogs would transform into fully viable females capable of producing eggs. He claimed there is also evidence that the chemical can do the same things to humans.
Atrazine is defined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a chlorinated triazine systemic herbicide. It selectively regulates the growth of annual grasses and broadleaf weeds. Pesticides that are known to contain this are registered for use on sweet corn, sorghum, sugarcane, wheat, macadamia nuts, and guava, said Yahoo Entertainment.
