Deeply offensive doesn't mean illegal. Unless there's a law that you can point at which bans this, there's no point in hiring lawyers because any challenge will be immediately thrown out. The real issue here in my view is that Facebook - a private company with no legal requirement to keep publishing anything that people post - is becoming the de facto news source for vast numbers of people. And, God help me, I have some sympathy for Facebook here if, as another commenter says, this study is being taken out of context and being used to push anti-vax conspiracy theories. It's such a complex issue.
If they are actually being labelled as false as part of the justification , there is at least an arguable case of defamation, stronger in a jurisdiction like Britain where truth of the damaging published characterization is a defense that the defendant must prove rather than falsity of the claim being an element that the plaintiff must prove.
I think from a legal standpoint, they’re on firm ground with simply censoring them under the “missing context” category. Everything under the sun could arguably be said to be missing context.
Where they went too far is with their “hoax alert” and their headline that said their article was false without evidence.
in the UK, where the journal is based, I think the libel laws would more than cover 'a law which bans this'.
English libel law permits individuals and companies to go to court to defend their reputations against the harms caused by false and defamatory publications made by others.
Since the statement that this is misleading, and a 'HOAX CLAIM', it would fall into "A statement is defamatory if its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant."[1]
