CrossFit Abandons Facebook, Slams Their 'Political Leanings' on the Way Out
Amid the talk about the growing problem of social media censorship, much of the focus has been on the ideological variety that has largely been aimed at the right half of the political spectrum.
But in reality, social media censorship has actually become broader than just about silencing certain political views and is working to silence all sorts of other non-political ideas and views that are deemed to be outside of the generally accepted mainstream of established opinions.
At least this was the message put forward by CrossFit, Inc. in a statement about why it had shut down its Facebook and Instagram pages.
The organization oversees the highly competitive style of nutritional, physical and psychological fitness that utilizes certain diets and workout routines that have been deemed extreme and out of the ordinary for most people.
BOXROX published the statement in its entirety, which began by noting how the organization prided itself on being “contrarian” in comparison to the prevailing views on diet and exercise held by academia and established institutions such as government agencies and pharmaceutical companies.
“CrossFit, Inc. defends relentlessly the right of its affiliates, trainers, and athletes to practice CrossFit, build voluntary CrossFit associations and businesses, and speak openly and freely about the ideas and principles that animate our views of exercise, nutrition, and health,” the organization said.
“This website — and, until recently, CrossFit’s Facebook and Instagram accounts — has long catalogued CrossFit’s tireless defense of its community against overreaching governments, malicious competitors, and corrupt academic organizations.”
The statement proceeded to detail how a CrossFit-related Facebook group page known as the “Banting7DayMealPlan” — which promotes a specific diet low in carbohydrates and high in fat — had been deleted and then later reinstated by Facebook, without any sort of warning or explanation for either decision.
CrossFit, Inc. noted that Facebook’s platform was utilized by millions of individuals and groups to help exchange and promote a variety of ideas and information.
“Facebook thus serves as a de facto authority over the public square, arbitrating a worldwide exchange of information as well as overseeing the security of the individuals and communities who entrust their ideas, work, and private data to this platform,” the organization wrote.
“This mandates a certain responsibility and assurance of good faith, transparency, and due process.”
Facebook hasn’t been living up to those responsibilities in the eyes of CrossFit, Inc., thus the decision was made to remove the organization entirely from the two related platforms — Facebook owns Instagram — until a thorough investigation and explanation of the deletion of the diet group’s page could be completed.
The organization proceeded to list eight major “publicly sourced complaints” against the platforms, several of which delved into how Facebook collects and shares the personal data of users with various governments, government agencies and other third parties as well as its weak record in protecting intellectual property and user data security protocols.
The third complaint on the list read that “Facebook censors and removes user accounts based on unknown criteria and at the request of third parties including government and foreign government agencies.”
The fifth complaint noted that “Facebook’s news feeds are censored and crafted to reflect the political leanings of Facebook’s utopian socialists while remaining vulnerable to misinformation campaigns designed to stir up violence and prejudice.”
The eighth complaint was that “Facebook is acting in the service of food and beverage industry interests by deleting the accounts of communities that have identified the corrupted nutritional science responsible for unchecked global chronic disease.”
“In this,” the complaint continued, “it follows the practices of Wikipedia and other private platforms that host public content but retain the ability to remove or silence — without the opportunity for real debate or appeal — information and perspectives outside a narrow scope of belief or thought.”
“In this case, the approved perspective has resulted in the deaths of millions through preventable diseases. Facebook is thus complicit in the global chronic disease crisis,” CrossFit, Inc. added.
As can be gleaned from the statement, while political censorship was mentioned by CrossFit, Inc. in the list of complaints, it was not the primary reason for the organization’s decision to remove its Facebook and Instagram pages. Instead, it was the censorship of the decidedly non-political ideas about exercise and nutrition held by some of the group’s adherents.
This just serves to prove that the “utopian socialists” who run the various social media platforms aim to impose their narrow views upon everyone and everything.
While that may predominately be political ideology at this point, they won’t stop at just censoring political views they disagree with but will spread out to silence any and all views that stray from those accepted by the societal establishments of academia, the corporate world and the government.
Facebook declined a request from Conservative Tribune, a section of The Western Journal, to comment.
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