The parents of conservative Canadian activist and filmmaker Lauren Southern have gotten some bad news from the vacation location booking platform Airbnb: They can't be on it because they are "closely associated" with their daughter, who has been banned from the platform altogether.
As reported by The Post Millennial, Southern posted the news to her Twitter along with the notice from Airbnb.
"My parents just got banned from Airbnb for being related to me," Southern, 27, wrote. "They have never booked anything for me. They do not represent me in any way. They aren't publicly political in any way. How is this sane in any way @Airbnb."
My parents just got banned from AirBnB for being related to me.
They have never booked anything for me. They do not represent me in any way. They aren't publicly political in any way.
How is this sane in any way @Airbnb pic.twitter.com/SOF01xkJFS
— Lauren Southern (@Lauren_Southern) February 7, 2023
"Hi," the notice from Airbnb noted. "We have an update to share. We're removed you from the Airbnb platform because your account is closely associated with a person who isn't allowed to use Airbnb. This means you'll no longer be able to book reservations on Airbnb. For the safety of our community, we may remove accounts that are closely associated with people who aren't allowed to use Airbnb."
"My parents are not involved in the political world," Southern told The Post Millennial. "They were planning a romantic getaway at a small cabin through Airbnb and were shocked to hear their relation with me resulted in their booking and accounts being shut down."
"One of the few things that has kept me going in politics is the ability to speak my mind while protecting my family," Southern said. "It seems the woke mob have realized they can’t silence dissidents with pure cancellation anymore. They have upped the ante, it won’t just be your own job, your own life and your own freedom but that of those you love. The cruelty and authoritarianism of our current corporate and political regime has no bounds."
The booking platform has policies regarding health and safety, which do not apply to this case. In addition, the platform's policies of "combatting hate, harassment, and discrimination" also have not been violated by either Southern or her parents.
The platform did not respond to a request for comment from The Post Millennial, which listed several questions its reporter would have asked if someone from the platform had responded:
Why has Airbnb blacklisted a conservative political pundit's parents from using Airbnb's service simply for being related to her?
Is it Airbnb's policy to hold people in a family accountable for the political perspectives of other people in that family?
Does Airbnb believe that only people with political views that Airbnb executives agree with should be able to use the service?
Does Airbnb also contact hosts to make sure that their views align with the views of Airbnb executives before allowing them to rent their homes using your service?
Does Airbnb set out the required political views that must be held by users of the service in order to enable them to use the service?
Conservative author and entrepreneur Michelle Malkin noted in February 2022 that Airbnb also booted her from the platform:
So here is the grim reality of life in Woke America 2022. In November, I spoke at a peaceful conference held by an organization that is deemed a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League. The title of my talk was “Race, Immigration, and Con. Inc: How I Came to See the Light.” It was a wide-ranging discussion of my three decades of reporting on the nation’s demographic and cultural deterioration—which I’ve chronicled firsthand on college campuses, at our borders, and in every crime-ridden, riot-prone, and mass migration-transformed metropolis from Los Angeles to Seattle and Portland, to Baltimore, Washington, D.C, New York, and Denver.
"As I’ve done throughout my career, I lambasted both Swamp Democrats and establishment Republicans for selling us out. The speech delved into the K-20 metastasis of anti-white curriculum, the corporate media’s whitewashing of black-on-Asian attacks, and the long campaign to censor nationalist dissidents who put America first. A week after my talk, San Francisco-based Airbnb notified me that I was banned from using its services ever again and imperiously deleted my account. Poof!" she noted.
She went on to say the platform has been booting conservatives for "hate" and "bias" since 2016.
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