{"id":177242,"date":"2019-11-15T19:32:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-16T00:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/11\/15\/so-its-down-to-one-guy\/"},"modified":"2019-11-15T19:32:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-16T00:32:00","slug":"so-its-down-to-one-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/11\/15\/so-its-down-to-one-guy\/","title":{"rendered":"So, It’s Down to One Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is responsible for most of the anti-vax ads on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I always knew that he was a nut-job about this, but I underestimated the depth of his influence:<\/p>\n

Just two organizations were responsible for the majority of anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook before the social media giant restricted such content in March of this year, according to a November 13 study in the journal Vaccine<\/a>.<\/span>

<\/span>Of 145 anti-vaccine Facebook advertisements that ran between May 31, 2017 and February 22, 2019, the World Mercury Project and a group called Stop Mandatory Vaccination together ran 54% of them. <\/span><\/p>\n

The World Mercury Project<\/a>, which ran the most ads of any single source, is an organization closely aligned with the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense<\/a>. Both are spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer turned prolific peddler of dangerous anti-vaccine misinformation. He and his organizations promote conspiracy theories about vaccine safety, including the roundly debunked claim that safe, life-saving immunizations are linked to autism. More recently, Kennedy has become a prominent opponent<\/a> of laws aimed at increasing vaccination rates<\/a> among school children.<\/span>

<\/span>Stop Mandatory Vaccination is a for-profit venture run by a man named Larry Cook. He, too, trumpets vaccine misinformation and fear-mongers. On Facebook and other platforms, Cook runs advertisements and campaigns making dubious links between the vaccines and tragic baby deaths. One such ad was banned by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority<\/a> last year. The regulator determined the ad to be “misleading,” “unsubstantiated,” and “likely to cause undue distress.” In other instances, he has claimed that the pro-vaccine medical community is covering up the “slaughter” of children.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These folks need to be shunned by all people of good conscience, and a fraud investigation or three might be good too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is responsible for most of the anti-vax ads on Facebook. I always knew that he was a nut-job about this, but I underestimated the depth of his influence: Just two organizations were responsible for the majority of anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook before the social media giant restricted …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[608,368,364,374,460],"class_list":["post-177242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-advertising","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-politics","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}