CrossFit Inc., the rights holder to the CrossFit fitness regimen, announced it will cease the use of its Facebook and Instagram pages for the time being, citing a lineup of objections to how Facebook operates both social media platforms and its business at large.
CrossFit is now encouraging people to follow it on its websites as well as on Twitter and YouTube.
The boycott was triggered after Facebook removed a South African user group called “Banting7DayMealPlan.”
That was “the final straw,” CrossFit founder Greg Glassman said, according to the newsletter.
“The group has 1.65 million users who post testimonials and other information regarding the efficacy of a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet,” CrossFit said.
The page was taken down without explanation and later reinstated without explanation, the release said. “Facebook’s action should give any serious person reason to pause, especially those of us engaged in activities contrary to prevailing opinion.”
CrossFit describes itself as “a contrarian physiological and nutrition prescription” with a “community of 15,000 affiliates and millions of individual adherents stands steadfastly and often alone against an unholy alliance of academia, government, and multinational food, beverage, and pharmaceutical companies.”
Public Square
CrossFit argues that Facebook, with its nearly 2.4 billion users worldwide, oversees “a significant share of the marketplace of public thought” and “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 release states.“This mandates a certain responsibility and assurance of good faith, transparency, and due process.”
The company continues by saying that “when it becomes clear that such responsibilities are betrayed or reneged upon to the detriment of our community,” CrossFit “can and must remove itself from this particular manifestation of the public square.”
Complaints
CrossFit lists eight objections to Facebook, including that the company shares users’ information with government authorities both in the United States and overseas, participates in mass government surveillance, sells users’ information, has weak intellectual property protections, and poor security that has led to data breaches.It further argues that “Facebook censors and removes user accounts based on unknown criteria and at the request of third parties including government and foreign government agencies” and 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.”
Finally, it says, “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.”
Under Siege
Facebook has faced scorn from multiple angles with different political factions coming with different mixes of complaints largely along the lines of those voiced by CrossFit, be it concerns over data privacy, election meddling, or censorship.“SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS should advance FREEDOM OF SPEECH,” the site says. “Yet too many Americans have seen their accounts suspended, banned, or fraudulently reported for unclear ‘violations’ of user policies.”
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