YouTube removed an interview conducted by Jordan Peterson with 2024 Democratic candidate for president Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claiming it violated its guidelines against sharing vaccine misinformation.
During the interview, RFK Jr. repeated his arguments against the vaccine while making other bizarre claims, including that chemicals in water areturning children transgender.
The Google-owned company said Monday: 'We removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating YouTube's general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities.'
Kennedy, who launched his presidential campaign in April, criticized YouTube for the removal of the video, which was posted earlier this month.
On Twitter, Kennedy wrote: 'What do you think Should social media platforms censor presidential candidates?'
'My conversation with @JordanBPeterson was deleted by @YouTube. Luckily7 you can watch it here on Twitter (thank you Elon Musk).
Peterson also responded, accusing YouTube of having 'taken upon itself to actively interfere with a presidential election campaign.'
According to its vaccine misinformation policy, YouTube forbids content that 'poses a serious risk of egregious harm by spreading medical misinformation about currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and by the World Health Organization (WHO).'
The platform stated its guidelines apply to all content and creators on the platform, no matter their politics.
Earlier this month, Kennedy's Instagram was reinstated following a ban issued due to posting 'debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.'
Kennedy's campaign told Fox News that although 'vaccines are not a major priority for Mr. Kennedy in this campaign, he will be happy to debate the issue with any prominent proponent of the conventional view.'
'Mr. Kennedy does not believe the attacks are coordinated. People are simply speaking out according to what they believe. These beliefs are the result of the long influence of corporate money in medicine, research, media, and government.'
'Even so, there are troubling indications in published research of serious safety issues with vaccines in general, but especially the Covid shots. The real issue for Mr. Kennedy is regulatory capture and corporate influence over government. He is in favor of properly conducted, unbiased, transparent safety testing of all vaccines,' concluded the campaign's statement.
In the interview with Peterson, Kennedy claimed it is the chemicals in the water that are turning children transgender.
The son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy said that 'a lot of the sexual dysphoria' America is seeing comes from exposure to chemicals in the water.
'I think a lot of the problems we see in kids, particularly boys, it's probably under-appreciated on that how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of the sexual dysphoria that we're seeing,' he said.
'I mean, they're swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals today, and many of those are endocrine disruptors. There's atrazine throughout our water supply.'
RFK Jr. has found himself in news headlines in recent days, mainly for his vaccine views. He has long been critical of them, saying they cause autism. The 2024 hopeful recently appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast, where he questioned vaccines.
That led Dr. Peter Hotez to criticize the interview on social media. Rogan then issued a challenge for the doctor to debate RFK Jr. on his podcast.
The challenge led to backlash, from both sides of the debate, on social media.