Over the course of this year’s Pride Month, many companies have come forward to show their support for the LGBT community. It especially seems more poignant that companies and corporations show their support this year in wake of the current presidency and the one year anniversary of the Pulse shooting. But while these sudden acts of solidarity may be well intended and make it seem that the world is taking a collective step forward, a lot of these acts are very transparent. It shouldn’t come as a surprise
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many companies and corporations have a history of acting against members of the LGBT community. Companies such as Chik-fil-A have caused an uproar in the past few years after its CEO stated his opinions on same-sex relationship and marriage. There’s a long history of LGBT relationships and characters being censored on television and in movies and many many more examples that would take to long to get to in this article.
But this isn’t a thing of the past. Just this year, YouTube created its new restricted mode. The feature cut off content that was deemed inappropriate or not safe for work for any viewers under the age of eighteen. But this feature had created outrage after many LGBT content creators on the site noticed that their videos were being restricted as well. Many of the videos that were being restricted were educational ones or simply vlogs from said content creators.
This wasn’t a singular incident though. Tumblr faced similar backlash for censoring the entire lesbian tag as nsfw on its site late last year. And earlier week, the blogging platform followed in YouTube’s footsteps and began censoring LGBT content to any bloggers under the age of eighteen, but still allows the porn bot blogs to run rampant on the site.
It is very telling of a company’s intentions when they claim to be allies but turn around and ignore LGBT people in the process. It’s actions like these that make people argue time and time again why corporations have no place at Pride events. Their original intention was to never come off as a supportive ally or learn about the various identities that fall under the umbrella. The intention always has, and always will be, to make money or to push a product or service forward.
