Pro-life outfit Live Action has had quite the week on social media. After appealing Pinterest’s decision to flag the group’s website as porn, the platform hit back and banned the group altogether, citing “medical misinformation.”
Live Action’s director of external affairs, Alison Centofante, took to Twitter on Tuesday to announce the suspension.
“Your account was permanently suspended because its contents went against our policies on misinformation,” Pinterest informed the organization. “We don’t allow harmful misinformation on Pinterest,” including “medical misinformation and conspiracies that turn individuals … into targets for harassment or violence.”
Just hours before the ban, conservative media activist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas published an exposé revealing that Pinterest had taken steps to censor the pro-life group. In February, the platform deliberately added Live Action’s website to a pornography ban list, restricting users’ ability to share the site in their posts (or ‘pins’), according to an employee at Pinterest who requested not to be named.
“LiveAction.org was added to a porn block list,” the employee said. “That means that if you try to make a pin that links to Liveaction.org, you won’t be allowed to – it won’t be created.”
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While the website had options to flag Live Action’s content as “sensitive” or as “hate speech,” the employee said he believes Pinterest sought to hide the restrictions on the group.
“I find it very concerning that it was added to a porn list, which seems like an effort to hide the fact that LiveAction is being blocked,” he said. “Why not just add it to the sensitive terms list … if you really think it’s hate speech? But instead you’re adding it to a porn list to hide what it is.”
The pro-life group’s site was not the only one wrongly added to the porn filter, the employee said. Documents he provided to Project Veritas reveal right-of-center website PJ Media also made the list.
The employee, according to O’Keefe, was fired from Pinterest later on Tuesday afternoon, after the exposé made waves online.
Live Action founder and president Lila Rose condemned the restrictions and subsequent banning in a statement on Tuesday.
“By secretly applying the label of ‘pornography’ to Live Action’s pro-life content, then permanently suspending our accounts, Pinterest demonstrates a concerted effort to sideline a leading pro-life organization the only way they knew how,” Rose said, adding the move was no “simple mistake.”
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Reactions from the group’s supporters on social media were more harsh, with some tweeting directly to Pinterest to challenge the decision and some calling it “unacceptable censorship.”
Pinterest’s move comes amid what some have called a social media “purge” targeting predominantly right-leaning figures and groups online. Last week, YouTube announced that it would suspend and demonetize a number of channels on its platform, including that of conservative comedian Steven Crowder, while in May Facebook gave the boot to rightwingers Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson and arch-conspiracist Alex Jones.
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