Peloton, a company known for its bicycles and treadmills connected to the Internet, is getting into the mess of Stop The Steal. The company is now preventing users from creating a #StopTheSteal tag from within the app, saying that the tag does not “meet our guidelines” when a user is going to create it. The Peloton community guidelines specifically prohibit “hate speech, offensive and obscene”, as well as “bullying, harassment and other offensive behavior”. We request additional clarification on when Peloton started blocking this hashtag and why.
The tags in Peloton act as identifiers for the community. When people subscribe to a tag, it appears under your name on the company’s scoreboard during training, and they can socialize with other members of that tag. Anyone can create a tag, and new tags are emerging in response to the #StopTheSteal ban. Groups like #StopTheSteall, #StopTheSteel, #StopTheCensorship and #StopTheFraud are marked as “new” in the app.
This is not the first time that Peloton has had to ban potentially inciting phrases. Last year, the company banned political conversations from its official Facebook groups, as well as QAnon-related tags, offering the same message from community guidelines. Although the app does not allow live chat with people in a class, the tags still share specific messages. The tags #BlueLivesMatter and #BlackLivesMatter are still allowed in the app.
Other technology companies have also moved to limit the scope of this hashtag. Instagram allows the hashtag to exist on the platform, but it shows only her “main” posts, not the most recent ones.