Popular China-owned social media app TikTok banned pro-life organization Live Action on Thursday for allegedly violating the platform’s “community guidelines.” The organization’s account was later restored with a spokesperson for the social media app citing a “human error” as the reason for Live Action’s removal.
“TikTok has just BANNED & permanently removed Live Action from the platform,” tweeted the organization’s president Lila Rose on Friday. “My team grew the largest pro-life voice on the platform.”
“We had 21,000 followers & over a million video views,” she added. “This is another egregious attack on the pro-life movement by pro-abortion Big Tech.”
Live Action said that it was notified by TikTok on Thursday that an educational video it had posted about raising awareness of the importance of speaking out on abortion had “violated community guidelines.” The video was then deleted by the social media platform.
The pro-life organization said that it appealed the removal immediately after it was notified of the violation. Live Action added within 30 minutes of the appeal, TikTok banned the account from its platform entirely, stating, “this account was banned due to multiple Community Guidelines violations.”
“Live Action joined TikTok in 2019 as part of our ongoing efforts to reach Gen Z and Millennials with the truth about abortion and to continue to solidify our role as digital leaders in the nonprofit space,” said Live Action Director of External Affairs, Alison Howard Centofante in a statement to Breitbart News.
“Our innovative, educational videos were hugely popular and grew our following to over 21k followers, quickly making Live Action the largest pro-life voice on the platform,” continued Howard. “Live Action’s videos shared baby photos and videos and highlighted the illogic of the pro-abortion movement.”
“This is blatant viewpoint discrimination and an egregious attempt to silence pro-life voices,” she added. “TikTok should reinstate our account in full and allow all voices on the platform.”
A spokesperson for TikTok told later Breitbart News that Live Action’s account had been banned due to a “human error,” and that the account has been restored.
“TikTok is a platform for creative expression that welcomes diversity of users and viewpoints,” said the TikTok spokesperson. “Following a review, we have determined that there were no violations of our Community Guidelines, and the issue was the result of a human error by a moderator.”
“We apologize for the mistake and have reactivated the account,” the spokesperson added.
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