Knitting Site Announces It's Banning Support of Trump

The latest group to take a stand against President Trump comes from ... the fiber arts community. Ravelry, which BuzzFeed calls "the most popular online forum for knitting fans," has issued a ban against any and all content supporting Trump and his administration, including "forum posts, projects, patterns, [and] profiles," per a statement on the group's site. "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy." It adds that Trump supporters are still welcome on the forum (they just can't talk about their love for the president), past posts before the policy won't result in any repercussions, and conservative politics and Republicans are "definitely not" banned.

It warns anti-Trumpers not to goad and "entrap" Trump supporters into posting anything that would get them in trouble. The statement notes that most of the wording in the new policy was appropriated from role-playing site RPG.net, which instituted a similar ban in October 2018. Gizmodo flagged one response: "A torrent of legal issues are coming your way," one conservative commenter warned on Twitter. An attorney noted online, however, that since Ravelry is a private company, it can dictate what political content appears on its site. "Internet intermediaries do not have to be neutral. This is legal," she says. Gizmodo adds that the First Amendment mandate on free speech only applies to government restriction on private citizens. (More ban stories.)