One of the world’s largest services for enabling the renting of privately-owned homes faced a massive backlash from the public after it became known that the woke tech giant had banned the parents of a conservative YouTuber. It eventually apologized by citing the ban as a “mistake.”
Lauren Southern is a prominent YouTuber whose account boasts more than 700,000 followers and has gained prominence for her unfiltered views on all things politics. She is no stranger to taking on the woke Silicon Valley entities, getting banned from Airbnb herself. As bad as that is, it’s one thing to ban a person with opposing views. It’s something else entirely to ban someone for being associated to them – in this case being someone’s parents.
Southern wrote a scathing and frightening tweet that shows how quickly nefarious actors can shut down dissent in a rapid fashion by targeting innocent family members.
“My parents are some of the sweetest people I know. They were just planning a romantic getaway, they aren’t political activists,” she said in a tweet. “All I’ve learned is that if governments and corporations can’t shut you up by harming you, they’ll now go for your families.”
The public first became aware of Southern’s parent’s ordeal after the YouTuber star shared a screenshot of their cancellation message from the rental platform.
“We have an update to share. We’ve removed you from the Airbnb platform because your account is closely associated with a person who isn’t allowed to use Airbnb,” her parents were informed by the company. “This means you’ll no longer be able to book reservations on Airbnb.”
Airbnb also said that it had made the decision under the euphemistic guise of looking out for the “safety of our community,” adding, “We don’t take these decisions lightly.”
In reply, Southern erupted on Twitter with receipts.
“My parents just got banned from AirBnB for being related to me,” she began. “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,” she concluded.
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
The tweet quickly garnered more than an impressive 10 million views on Elon Musk’s social media platform and the story became so big she was soon featured on Tucker Carlson’s primetime program.
“There has definitely been a Pandora’s box opened in the culture war,” she said to Carlson earlier this week. “I think progressives have realized with the laws we have In place defending civil liberties, they can’t bring a social credit system in yet, so they found a way to circumvent it through the corporate class. They can just impose a social credit system on this using Big Tech.”
A producer for Tucker Carlson’s nightly program reached out to Airbnb and corroborated the story. Her parents had indeed been banned. The woke company then proceeded to say that the ban had been a “mistake” and was reversed the same day she appeared on Carlson’s #1 show.
Of course, it’s obvious this wasn’t a mistake. Southern is an outspoken critic of everything Airbnb’s gender studies majors believe in, and so they wielded their insane power to crush dissent. The mistake wasn’t that they banned the parents; their only mistake was that they got caught.
Making this “mistake’ more obvious in its true intentions was the fact that, according to Southern, her parents never even appealed the ban. In other words, the only reason the mistake got flagged is because of the wave of negative publicity and the combination of her tweets’ widespread reach and her appearance on a program that regularly captures an audience of more than 3 million people.
Southern told Carlson:
“What was funny is when they reversed the decision, they claimed in an email to my parents that they had reviewed their appeal,” she said. “My parents never appealed the decision so they are attempting to create this to get this phony narrative that it was all a mistake.”
“How do you mistakenly track down an activist’s family, mistakenly send them a specific email saying it was because of their relation to me? It makes no sense. They are trying to cover up something nefarious here,” she continued. “And the only reason they’re not continuing to do this to me is because I have a platform, and they are testing the waters. If they got away with it this time they would’ve kept going, but they miscalculated how woke their market is.”
Catch Lauren telling her story below.
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded YouTube video.
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