Ticketing service Eventbrite blacklisted conservative organization ACT for America on Thursday over supposed violations of the platform’s “Community Guidelines.” The ban arrives just one week after a former Nancy Pelosi intern wrote a hit piece on the organization, relying on information provided by the discredited SPLC.
ACT for America (ACT) is a grassroots organization founded by Brigitte Gabriel and focused on a wide array of topics pertaining to national security, such as securing the United States border, defending constitutional rights, combating terrorism, and supporting Israel.
The organization had been utilizing Eventbrite for ticketing as ACT founder Brigitte Gabriel is set to embark on a book tour across the county for her latest release, Rise: In Defense of Judeo-Christian Values and Freedom.
On Wednesday, the organization’s National Grassroots Director, Thomas Hern, received an email from Eventbrite alerting him of the website’s “Community Guidelines,” as well as listing the titles of several events ACT had posted to the website, informing the director that the events had been “removed” for violating the guidelines.
All of ACT’s listings on Eventbrite had been the same, with the only difference being the event’s specific location for Gabriel’s upcoming book tour.
“Eventbrite does not permit on our platform content or organizations that promote or encourage hate, violence, or harassment towards others and/or oneself,” stated the email, adding that the website prohibits the promotion of hate or harassment based on “race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
“We have determined that the events in question violate our Community Guidelines and are therefore not permitted on the Eventbrite platform,” added the ticketing website in its email, “As a result, your event listings have been removed.”
Hern told Breitbart News that after receiving the email, he logged into the organization’s Eventbrite account and edited the event listings to change any language that he thought could be misconstrued as a violation of “community guidelines” based on today’s increasingly ambiguous definition of “hate” among big tech companies.
“The first version of the event description said ‘Come hear Brigitte Gabriel speak about illegal immigration, the left’s culture war, and radical Islamic terrorism,'” said Hern to Breitbart News, “I took out those three talking points and changed it to ‘Come hear Birigttie Gabriel, as she calls on all patriotic Americans to rise in the defense of freedom.'”
“And at the end, I even added ‘Act for America has a strict zero tolerance policy for violence and discrimination’ and linked it to our policy on non-discrimination and anti-violence,” added the ACT director.
The following day, Hern received a second email informing him that the organization’s Eventbrite account had been banned from the platform altogether.
In its email, Eventbrite reiterated what it had initially stated in the first email, adding, “these events have been re-published multiple times since our initial removal, we have again unpublished them and your account has been suspended at this time.”
“Eventbrite didn’t delete the events or mention in the email that I couldn’t edit them,” said Hern to Breitbart News.
ACT has been banned from the event platform just one week after a former Nancy Pelosi intern released a Roll Call article accusing the organization of having ties with “Neo-Nazis” after ACT had called out Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for her antisemitic statements.
In her article, the journalist relied heavily, if not solely, on information provided by the discredited SPLC.
Eventbrite did not clarify or explain in its email to ACT for America on what the organization had done or said to violate its community guidelines.
Although Eventbrite did not answer Breitbart News’ questions about the blacklisting, a spokesperson provided the following statement:
Our mission is to bring the world together through live experiences. We strive to provide a platform that enables people to gather for their chosen purpose and we support the representation of diverse viewpoints, so long as they don’t violate our Terms.
As a platform that gives rise to millions of events, we recognize the power of assembly and consider our role here very thoughtfully. We work hard to strike a balance between free expression of ideas and ensuring the real-life connections we’re facilitating are safe and respectful of the broader community. We do not permit events, content, or creators that promote or encourage hate, violence, or harassment towards others and/or oneself.
Our policy is to remove content that is in violation of our guidelines and after the team reviewed the events in question, we enforced it.
Breitbart News will continue to follow this story for updates.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo and on Instagram.
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