(Image via Twitter)
The popular online travel accommodations site Airbnb has banned white supremacists from utilizing its services.
Airbnb’s co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk said on Tuesday that white supremacists violate the website's terms and conditions which bar discrimination.
They can no longer make or host reservations via the website.
“This past weekend has been shocking. Airbnb’s mission has been to bring people together, fostering inclusion, understanding,” Blecharczyk said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “We make every one of our users sign a pledge when they sign up that they will not discriminate and exhibit hatred.”
“Whenever we become aware of such examples they are permanently banned from platform,” he said.
In the days leading up to the "Unite the Right" protest in Charlottesville that turned violent, Airbnb actively cancelled reservations and accounts held by people it determined were "pursuing behavior on the platform that would be antithetical to the Airbnb Community Commitment," which requires users to "accept people regardless of their race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or age."
Airbnb can determine whether a person violates that agreement through its background check processes or through input from its community of users, the company told NBC29 in a statement.
Other companies such as Google and GoDaddy have also banned white supremacists, barred from utilizing their domain registrar services.
The decisions come as a reaction to the violence in Charlottesville on Saturday.
A man drove his car through a crowd of counter-protesters at a white supremacist rally demonstrating against the removal of a Confederate statue, leaving one woman dead and 19 others injured.
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