You won’t be seeing any images from Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ 2012 nuptials on Pinterest and The Knot anymore. The prominent websites joined other platforms taking a stand by placing a shadow ban on all images relating to plantation weddings.
Pinterest, The Knot Worldwide, Brides and Zola recently announced that they would be making changes to their platform that would restrict all references to plantations, as well as any language attempting to romanticise these locations as wedding venues.
Those searching for such content will receive a notification that the images may violate Pinterest’s policies. The sites will no longer work with vendors that are plantations or attempt to romantacise such locations.
This means that images from Ryan Reynold’s and Blake Lively’s 2012 wedding held at Boone Hall Plantation in South Carolina, have now been shadow banned from these popular sites.
This move is in response to a campaign led by racial justice organization, Color of Change, who argued that the weddng industry was glamorising and capatalising sites of human rights atrocities.
“The decision to glorify plantations as nostalgic sites of celebration is not an empowering one for the Black women and justice-minded people who use your site,” Color of Change wrote to the Knot Worldwide executives. “Plantations are physical reminders of one of the most horrific human rights abuses the world has ever seen. The wedding industry routinely denies the violent conditions Black people faced under chattel slavery by promoting plantations as romantic places to marry.”
Many plantations in America thrived off slave labour and became places of human rights abuse for the people forced into these demeaning positions. As such, they’ve become painful reminders of a dark and sordid history for many African Americans who descended from such slaves.
“Weddings should be a symbol of love and unity. Plantations represent none of those things,” said a Pinterest spokesperson. “We are working to limit the distribution of this content and accounts across our platform, and continue to not accept advertisements for them.”
“We want to make sure we’re serving all our couples and that they don’t feel in any way discriminated against,” The Knot’s chief marketing officer Dhanusha Sivajee told Buzzfeed News.
Image: Instagram / Ryan Reynolds
