Five minutes of CrossFit, and you’d probably have to take me to the emergency room. For a lot of folks, though, it’s a lifestyle that they swear by.

Excellent. Whatever makes you happy.

Apart from the occasional Instagram post of friends and family lifting the heavy thing and moving it around, I didn’t really pay much attention to CrossFit.

Then CrossFit deleted its Facebook and Instagram pages on May 22, and followed the move with a press statement, reports MyBroadband.

In its press statement the company described itself as a “contrarian physiological and nutrition prescription for improving fitness and health”.

“It is contrarian because prevailing views of fitness, health, and nutrition are wrong and have unleashed a tsunami of chronic disease upon our friends, family, and communities,” it said.

“The voluntary CrossFit community stands steadfastly and often alone against an unholy alliance of academia, government, and multinational food, beverage, and pharmaceutical companies.”

Right. Whoever wrote this probably owns a broadsword and has played The Witcher one too many times.

CrossFit said it also defends the right of its affiliates, trainers, and athletes to build voluntary CrossFit associations and speak freely about their ideas and principles.

CrossFit said it has catalogued its tireless defense of its community against overreaching governments, malicious competitors, and corrupt academic organisations.

This has now extended to its Facebook and Instagram pages, after the company deleted the properties following Facebook’s decision to take down the Banting 7 Day Meal Plan user group without warning or explanation.

Facebook really does have a hit-and-miss approach to dealing with problematic pages. There’s nothing wrong with Banting. Try focusing your energy on the anti-vaxxers, Facebook. They’re going to kill us all.

CrossFit, on the other hand, needs to chill. But first, here are their eight publicly sourced complaints about Facebook’s actions:

1. Facebook collects and aggregates user information and shares it with state and federal authorities, as well as security organisations from other countries.
2. Facebook collaborates with government security agencies on massive citizen surveillance programs such as PRISM.
3. Facebook censors and removes user accounts based on unknown criteria and at the request of third parties including government and foreign government agencies.
4. Facebook collects, aggregates, and sells user information as a matter of business. Its business model allows governments and businesses alike to use its algorithmically conjured advertising categories as sophisticated data-mining and surveillance tools.
5. Facebook’s news feeds are censored and crafted to reflect the political leanings of Facebook’s utopian socialists while remaining vulnerable to misinformation campaigns designed to stir up violence and prejudice.
6. Facebook, as a matter of business and principle, has weak intellectual property protections and is slow to close down IP theft accounts.
7. Facebook has poor security protocols and has been subject to the largest security breaches of user data in history.
8. Facebook is acting in the service of food and beverage industry interests by deleting the accounts of communities that have identified the corrupted nutritional science responsible for unchecked global chronic disease.

The stuff about Facebook’s sketchy attitude towards data mining, privacy and misinformation campaigns holds true. Then there’s the tin-foil-hat stuff about “utopian socialists”, and “corrupted nutritional science”.

The problem with mixing in the crazy with the truth is that it makes the truth look crazy.

A less Game of Thrones style epic speech would go a long way to improve this as well.

Until then, CrossFit’s Facebook page is down, so you’ll have to get your videos of people lifting tyres somewhere else.

[source:mybroadband]