Federal MP Craig Kelly has finally been banned from Facebook after incessantly posting about unproven (and potentially dangerous) coronavirus treatments for the duration of the pandemic.
Kelly, who quit the Liberal Party in February but remained in parliament as an independent crossbencher, had one of the biggest online followings of any Aussie politician.
“We don’t allow anyone, including elected officials, to share misinformation about COVID-19 that could lead to imminent physical harm or COVID-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.
“We have clear policies against this type of content and have removed Mr Kelly’s Facebook Page for repeated violations of this policy.”
His posts often had among the highest engagement of any politician, often reaching a wider audience than people far more senior than him.
The ban has been a long time coming. Earlier this year, Kelly copped a one-week suspension from Facebook after he received four strikes about the content he posted. This time around, he’s taking the news just as you’d expect.
Craig Kelly not happy about his Facebook ban – posting on Instagram (where he still has an active profile) he has set his location as “Facebook Jail”https://t.co/JNUEDcFdtE pic.twitter.com/ulTHnc1VXn
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) April 26, 2021
However some have argued that the online platform was too slow to act when Kelly had already been flagrantly violating Facebook’s rules with his content for months.
The whole thing is somewhat reminiscent of the time when Twitter finally banned former US President Donald Trump for violating its community guidelines, after he had been spreading hatred and inciting violence for years.
Kelly would probably be happy about the above comparison, which says a lot about the kind of shit we’ll no longer be subjected to thanks to the ban.
Unfortunately for us, a very similarly-named Facebook page with some very similar posts still exists, and it sure looks as if Kelly might have set it up as a cheeky backup page for moments just like this. Sure enough, Kelly confirmed to the ABC that he had access to a second page.
We can only imagine that Kelly is going on some incoherent tirade in his office about “free speech” right now. Too bad he can’t be heard over the sound of the whole country collectively muttering: “Sucked in.”
