Pro-Life Outlet LifeSite Claims They Were De-platformed Without Warning

Alex Hall | October 29, 2018
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LifeSite, a prominent pro-life advocacy outlet, is claiming to have been blacklisted by its web host with no prior warning.

As of October 27, LifeSite posted on their website:

"This is extremely urgent. I need to inform you that LifeSite just received an email at 8:30 p.m. EST from our web-hosting company alerting us that they will be taking our website down within 12 hours, if not sooner.

They wrote: “we are implementing our ‘SUSPENSION OF SERVICES’ clause...and giving you 12 hours notice to move your web site operations off of our servers..."

We received absolutely no forewarning whatsoever about this decision."

The site updated their alert after their in-house web developer set up a short-term fix to keep the website online.

“Our web developer was up all night implementing temporary measures to keep our site online even if our current web-hosting company followed through on its threat to shut down our services. We are extremely grateful for his hard work on a Saturday night. However, this is only a temporary solution. We are currently looking for a web-hosting company that will not cave to threats of this kind.”

The news comes just after another high profile deplatforming case occurred, seeming to mark an increasing trend. Gab, a radically pro-free speech website criticized for allowing "hate speech" online, has been similarly shut down.  Breitbart noted:

"The social network, which prides itself on supporting user free speech and only cracks down on illegal content, was targeted after Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting suspect Robert Bowers allegedly made several anti-Semitic posts on the platform — despite the fact that Gab disavowed Bowers and worked with law enforcement."

One might consider how Gab was the example Libertarians and Free Market types cited when they said that people should create their own platforms instead of regulating Facebook in order to protect free speech. The problem is that credit card companies, web hosts, banks and so on can still still refuse to service, effectively cutting off the ability of a business or media company to be viable.

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