Despite the very cool (but kinda vague) gay advertisement for McDonald’s in France coming out awhile ago, McDonald’s in general isn’t known for having the best LGBT track record. That might be changing, as recently the fast food giant has tweaked it’s free Wifi service to block fewer gay and lesbian themed websites from their restaurants—at least in New Zealand.
The free Internet was put into motion across the whole of New Zealand in December, and now the burger joints down under say they’re the biggest supplier of free Internet access in the country. But of course, McDonald's has that whole “family friendly” thing going on, in whatever country one might find them, so a bunch of sites that weren’t deemed family friendly enough were blocked, including LGBT sites.
McDonald's backed down a bit after a public outcry, unblocking gay themed sites like Agender and Rainbow Youth, as well as New Zealand Family Planning’s home page. But it still refuses to unblock a popular New Zealand site called GayNZ, claiming that too many of the third-party ads on the site are sexually explicit.
We would have done some investigative fact checking of our own, but we got kicked out of McDonald’s and had to finish our surfing over a breakfast croissant at Burger King. Sigh. A journalist’s freedom is beset on all sides by fast food tyranny.
The free Internet was put into motion across the whole of New Zealand in December, and now the burger joints down under say they’re the biggest supplier of free Internet access in the country. But of course, McDonald's has that whole “family friendly” thing going on, in whatever country one might find them, so a bunch of sites that weren’t deemed family friendly enough were blocked, including LGBT sites.
McDonald's backed down a bit after a public outcry, unblocking gay themed sites like Agender and Rainbow Youth, as well as New Zealand Family Planning’s home page. But it still refuses to unblock a popular New Zealand site called GayNZ, claiming that too many of the third-party ads on the site are sexually explicit.
We would have done some investigative fact checking of our own, but we got kicked out of McDonald’s and had to finish our surfing over a breakfast croissant at Burger King. Sigh. A journalist’s freedom is beset on all sides by fast food tyranny.
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