Pinterest reportedly fired the young man who exposed it for secretly censoring the pro-life group Live Action.
Eric Cochran worked as a software engineer at Pinterest before he was fired for exposing its bias against pro-lifers, The Daily Caller reports.
Cochran, who is pro-life, said he was fired after the company realized that he was the whistleblower who spoke with Project Veritas. He said security guards approached him and told him to leave; when he asked why, he said they did not give him an answer.
Earlier this week, he exposed documents showing that Pinterest was blocking content from the pro-life group Live Action by placing it on a list with pornography sites and other objectionable content.
“I did this because I saw wrongdoing,” Cochran told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Wednesday. “And the normalization of censorship within Big Tech companies right now is downright un-American.”
He said big online companies are secretly protecting the abortion lobby.
“I saw a Big Tech company saying … behind closed doors that they believe that Live Action shouldn’t have a platform to speak, and the big thing is: I want them to have to … say this publicly instead of behind closed doors,” he said.
Cochran said he hopes other employees within these big media companies will start blowing the whistle on their secret biases, too.
“This is about abortion. You are seeing now with YouTube doing Pinterest’s bidding by removing the Project Veritas video,” he said.
SIGN THE PETITION! Attention Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube: Stop Censoring Pro-Lifers
Google removed the exposé from YouTube, claiming it violates its privacy policy, according to the report.
“They are 100-percent in to protect the abortion lobby,” he continued. “And pro-lifers who exist within Big Tech companies — there’s a lot of us. They need to come to Project Verita,s and they need to expose what’s going on. They need to make these tech companies like I have explicitly say that ‘we are on the side of the abortion lobby.”
Pro-life advocates set up a fundraiser to help Cochran until he can find another job. Find it here.
After the expose came out, Pinterest permanently suspended Live Action’s account. The company claimed that Live Action’s “pro-life content is ‘medically inaccurate information’ and ‘conspiracies’ that lead to ‘violence,’” Live Action President and founder Lila Rose said.
UPDATE: @Pinterest has now permanently suspended @LiveAction’s account (my account remains suspended), claiming our pro-life content is “medically inaccurate information” & “conspiracies” that lead to “violence.” #LifeCensored pic.twitter.com/zSoIgbVcSX
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) June 11, 2019
“Pinterest has targeted Live Action, I believe, because our message is so effective at educating millions about the humanity of the preborn child and the injustice of abortion,” Rose said.
She said they have received numerous complaints in the past few months about people having difficulty pinning their content.
She urged the company to stop its “secret and dishonest” censorship and allow the free expression of pro-life content.
Cochran’s concerns did not end there. He said someone at Pinterest also added “David Daleiden/Planned Parenthood” to a list of conspiracy theories that it monitors. Daleiden exposed the abortion chain for harvesting aborted baby body parts and allegedly illegally selling them.
He produced documents showing that “Bible verses” and other Christian terms also are listed on the Pinterest offensive terms list, a list that employees add terms to manually.
For years, pro-life leaders have suspected that internet giants like YouTube, Google, Facebook and Twitter are quietly censoring pro-life content. Earlier this spring, the pro-life film “Unplanned” had its account suspended on Twitter and then lost all of its followers; Twitter later said it was a mistake and restored the account. Google also temporarily listed the film as “propaganda” on its search engine.
Last fall, makers of the “Gosnell” film said Facebook also censored their ads. The Susan B. Anthony List accused Facebook of censoring its election ads just prior to the November mid-terms as well.
Live Action has said Twitter repeatedly censored its ads. Founder Lila Rose said the social media site blocked their ability to advertise and told them to change information on their websites if they want to start advertising again. In 2015, Facebook also refused to allow Live Action to advertise one of its stories because “the image or video thumbnail may shock or evoke a negative response from viewers.” The image was of baby Eli Thompson who was born without a nose.
Facebook became a subject of national controversy in 2016 after some of its workers admitted that they suppressed conservative news stories in favor of liberal ones. LifeNews.com, which is the leading pro-life news website on the Internet and the only one specifically devoted to pro-life issues, has long believed that Facebook has been suppressing its traffic.
ACTION: Contact Pinterest to complain about the censorship.
