Pinterest has suspended the account of pro-life group Live Action, saying it violates the social media company’s policies on “misinformation.”
Alison Centofante, director of external affairs for Live Action, tweeted about the incident last week as the organization appealed Pinterest’s decision.
“LiveAction.org” is the only pro-life website included on Pinterest’s list of banned websites, Centofante said in a tweet.
The nonprofit educates on, reports on, and investigates the abortion industry, according to its webpage, and seeks to inspire others in the pro-life movement.
Project Veritas, an undercover investigative journalism nonprofit, received and published information from Pinterest employee Eric Cochran, revealing the social media platform added Live Action’s website to a list of sites blocked for pornographic content.
The whistleblower has since lost his job at Pinterest and was interviewed Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” about his decision to speak out.
“I saw a big tech company saying quietly behind closed doors that they believe Live Action shouldn’t have a platform to speak. … I want them to have to say this explicitly,” Cochran told host Tucker Carlson.
Lila Rose, founder of Live Action, told Twitter followers that although the organization initally was put on Pinterest’s pornography blocklist, Pinterest later changed its story, calling Live Action’s content “inaccurate.”
Pinterest is a social media website that allows users to share or “pin” photos, recipes, videos, and other content they collect to their account. When Pinterest bans a website, users are blocked from creating or sharing any content that links back to that page.
“What exactly is Pinterest attempting to block?” Centofante said in a tweet. “Inspirational messages to pregnant mothers, ultrasound images showing the science of prenatal development, and images saying women deserve better than abortion industry leader Planned Parenthood.”
Centofante later tweeted an update that Pinterest had “doubled down” in response to Live Action’s appeal.
Rose posted Pinterest’s decision to permanently suspend Live Action’s account due to its “harmful misinformation,” including “medical information and conspiracies that turn individuals and facilities into targets for harassment and violence.”
Centofante pointed out that Planned Parenthood was not included on Pinterest’s list of banned sites, although the organization has profited from selling baby body parts, has been accused of mistreating pregnant women, and has clinics that have violated health codes with unsanitary equipment and unsafe practices.
Live Action included a thread on Twitter about “actually dangerous” content Pinterest allows, including do-it-yourself, at-home abortions.
“Pinterest has targeted Live Action, I believe, because our message is so effective at educating millions about the humanity of the preborn child and the injustice of abortion,” Rose said in a press release, adding:
Pinterest says that their mission is to ‘help empower people to discover things that they love,’ but despite the fact that millions of people love babies and the pro-life cause, they are secretly censoring our life-affirming messages. Pinterest users deserve to know the truth and our messages deserve to be treated fairly.
Pro-life activists rallied outside Pinterest headquarters in San Francisco in response to what they called censorship.
Pinterest did not respond to The Daily Signal’s multiple requests for comment.