Airbnb admitted it made a "mistake" in banning conservative provocateur Lauren Southern’s parents from using its service this week, but she believes something more "nefarious" is going on with the home rental service.
Southern, a far-right content creator who used to work for conservative Canadian outlet Rebel News, revealed this week that Airbnb alerted her parents that they were barred from renting a property for a "romantic getaway" because of their daughter’s political activity.
Airbnb had banned Southern previously and claimed in an email to her parents that the ban extended to them because of their association with outspoken political activist.
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"There has definitely been a Pandora’s box opened in the culture war," Southern said Wednesday on "Tucker Carlson Tonight." " I think progressives have realized with the laws we have In place defending civil liberties, they can’t bring a social credit system in yet, so they found a way to circumvent it through the corporate class. They can just impose a social credit system on this using Big Tech."
Southern posted a copy the official notice that was provided to her parents after they tried to book their getaway on Twitter Tuesday, emphasizing that her parents "aren't publicly political in any way."
The email stated, "We’ve removed you from the Airbnb platform because your account is closely associated with a person who isn’t allowed to use Airbnb. This means you’ll no longer be able to book reservations on Airbnb."
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It further elaborated, "For the safety of our community, we may remove accounts that are closely associated with people who aren’t allowed to use Airbnb."
Southern's tweet gained massive attention on Twitter, with the original post being viewed by more than eight million people. It prompted "Tucker Carlson Tonight" producer Gregg Re to seek answers from the company. He corroborated Southern’s account and relayed that the company told him banning her parents was a "mistake" and reversed its decision on Wednesday.
Southern, however, denied it was a mistake.
"What was funny is when they reversed the decision, they claimed in an email to my parents that they had reviewed their appeal," she said. "My parents never appealed the decision so they are attempting to create this to get this phony narrative that it was all a mistake."
"How do you mistakenly track down an activist's family, mistakenly send them a specific email saying it was because of their relation to me? It makes no sense. They are trying to cover up something nefarious here," she continued. "And the only reason they’re not continuing to do this to me is because I have a platform, and they are testing the waters. If they got away with it this time they would’ve kept going, but they miscalculated how woke their market is."
Airbnb has a history of making business decisions in accordance with liberal politics. Fox News Digital reported in December that the company’s updated inclusivity policy banned renting out homes or rooms that have been associated with slavery in the past.
Southern said she finds it baffling that family members of known felons and convicts are not subjected to the same treatment that her parents were by the platform.
"They don’t even treat the families of [Jeffrey] Epstein and [Ghislain] Maxwell like this," she said.
"I think we know the only thing they are sorry for is bad PR and that they were trending on Twitter last night."
Fox News' Gabriel Hays contributed to this report.
