Vantage Point Archery's Censorship Story | American Broadhead Manufacturer Censored by LinkedIn

Editor note:
We’ve fought back against Big Tech’s war on the outdoor lifestyle since 2016. Vantage Point Archery was the latest victim of Silicon Valley with biased treatment coming from LinkedIn, which deemed the company as violating their terms of service. We invited the VPA team to share their story to help raise awareness of the challenges the hunting and fishing industry are facing.

American Broadhead Manufacturer being Censored by LinkedIn

• LinkedIn doesn’t care about the hunting industry. 
• LinkedIn doesn’t care about small businesses. 
• LinkedIn doesn’t care about supporting U.S.A manufacturing. 

LinkedIn thinks hunting is barbaric. Barbaric? Tell that to the men and women who rely on and have relied on hunting to feed their families for hundreds of thousands of years. 

Much of the content that VPA shares is based around our valued customers and the experiences they have had using VPA products. On August 13th, we posted to our VPA social media accounts a customer testimonial. The post is shown below: 

Later that night, VPA team members discovered the Vantage Point Archery LinkedIn page had been taken down. No admins of the company page were notified. No email was sent explaining why VPA’s page had been taken down – the only “explanation” was a note for admins of the page to see saying VPA’s page was removed for violating LinkedIn’s professional policies. 

Censorship at its finest!

LinkedIn has removed Vantage Point Archery because it goes against LinkedIn’s “Professional Policies”. 

Can someone explain that to us? We are a small business in a $1 Billion dollar industry. We post information about our products. Our competitors have their companies on LinkedIn.

We talk about our customers, our employees, and our distributors. We make and build all our products in the USA. 

We create local good paying jobs and employ families. We build the best broadheads on the market and design them to be used ethically and humanely in the harvesting of wild game.

What part of all of this violates LinkedIn Professional Policy?

We asked all our contacts on LinkedIn and all other social media sites to help us beat this censorship. Help us stand up to the cancel culture. We are now in a time in this country, this world where people can’t have differing opinions. Where social media gets to decide what can be presented and who can view it. We need to stop this nonsense!

We need a JOE ROGAN moment here. We need to hit this head on. We can’t hide and let this go without a fight.

We asked our contacts to blow up social media with this message – to “Like”, “Follow”, share, post, hashtag, telephone, telegraph, tell your momma about Vantage Point Archery.

We asked to help us get our page back on LinkedIn. We asked them to help us send a message to the cancel culture and the social media giants that we won’t be silenced, that small businesses can and will fight back. 

Stand up for small business and stand up for freedom.

We asked and our community provided. 

One admin of the page, VPA Marketing Manager Alex Christianson, messaged LinkedIn Help requesting the page get reinstated -- and received no response. Crickets. 

VPA Owner, Jeff Stringer, took to the platform on his personal account and posted letting his connections know that VPA’s page is being censored, pleading the message above and more. This series of posts received high numbers of reach, engagement, and agreement with the unfairness and vagueness of this removal of a professional business’ page from the platform. 

Stringer’s post received enough traction that LinkedIn had no choice but to reach out. 

Stringer was contacted by LinkedIn, they state that VPA was censored for "Providing direct-to-purchase links and/or private contact information to facilitate the sale of illegal or dangerous goods or services such as: Weapons and firearms...".

Essentially, LinkedIn is saying that VPA’s page was removed due to a specific post, the one mentioned earlier in this article showcasing a customer testimonial, because it directly linked to the page of VPA’s website containing our selection of broadheads. VPA has used this link countless times not only on the LinkedIn platform, but also on other social media platforms, and never received any notion of this link being inappropriate or in violation of any policies. 

LinkedIn did not simply remove the post which they are claiming violates their professional policies, they went to the extreme and removed VPA’s page in its entirety from the platform – without letting anyone from the company know it was being removed or why. It took Stringer spreading awareness of LinkedIn’s censorship in order for anyone at the company to give us an explanation. 

Our products are broadheads used for hunting. Several of our competitors as well as other companies in the hunting industry in general are on the platform and posts links to product pages.

Here are the reasons this is all B.S.:

• Hunting has been a tradition in the USA since before its founding.
• Hunting is LEGAL!
• Manufacturing and selling broadheads is LEGAL.
• Ethically and humanely taking game with broadheads is LEGAL.
• Advertising and promoting hunting and the ethical use of modern hunting methods is LEGAL!
• Teaching our youth how to hunt and taking them hunting is LEGAL!
• Censoring people because you don’t like hunting should be ILLEGAL!
• Ryan Roslansky, using your social media platform to CENSOR and Manipulate content should be ILLEGAL!

Where is the support for differing opinions? Where is your support for freedom and freedom of speech?

Ryan Roslansky thank you for restoring Vantage Point Archery’s LinkedIn page, but shame on you for taking it down in the first place! Who else are you censoring or silencing and why? What other messages are you trying to hide or manipulate? What is your endgame and motive?

While you have returned us to your site, this discussion and fight is far from over. Let’s talk soon!

Yes, LinkedIn reinstated VPA’s LinkedIn page – but only after this censorship was receiving attention from the community and shining a bad light onto LinkedIn. 

This removal of VPA’s page from LinkedIn was intended to silence our company from promoting products that support the hunting community. VPA will not stand to be shaken by giants such as LinkedIn, VPA will not be censored or canceled for promoting ethical, quality, U.S.A made products to an industry with strong values and beliefs. If anything, this stunt from LinkedIn reignited the spark in VPA to stand up for small business and our freedoms as Americans. Who’s with us?

Follow VPA on GoWild and support an American-Made company. 

Learn more about VPA by visiting our website www.vparchery.com

Message from LinkedIn Employee:

LinkedIn Jeffery Stringer
Reference # 220816-018443
Status: Open
Response (08/16/2022 22:23 CST)
Good evening, Jeffery,

Thank you for bringing the restriction of Vantage Point Archery's page to our attention. The restriction was removed and the page restored. Please let me know if you or others experience any issues viewing or accessing it so that we can further investigate.

I wanted to apologize for what I am sure was a frustrating experience in addition to providing additional context with regard to the page's restriction. The restriction you experienced resulted from this post, specifically the direct link to arrow heads contained in it which violates our policies, specifically: "Providing direct-to-purchase links and/or private contact information to facilitate the sale of illegal or dangerous goods or services such as: Weapons and firearms...". You can view the policy in its entirety here. Though posting direct-to-purchase links is a violation of our policies, posting links to the website itself is not.

If there are any additional questions or concerns that I can answer or clarify for you, please let me know.

Best,
Grace

Vantage Point Archery's Background

At VPA we develop and manufacture the largest selections of solid one-piece precision-machined archery broadheads. We manufacture just about everything from 100 grains up to 300 grains in three-blade, two-blade, and Single Bevels models. We also offer field points, small game heads, turkey spurs, arrow footers, and risers. 

VPA started in Ft Wayne, Indiana over 13 years ago and we are proud to offer only American-made products! Considering all our machining is done in-house, we can control product quality more effectively.

Prior to the past 2 or 3 years, most VPA sales were attributed to word-of-mouth and relations with local archery shops. Over the past couple years, VPA has focused its efforts into expanding the VPA footprint to consist of selling our products through our website and through the shops of approximately 100 dealers. 

VPA attributes recent growth to not only supplying fixed blade broadheads of the highest quality to the market, but also doing so through a commitment to American Manufacturing and the American workforce, with 100% of our products being Made in the U.S.A. 

While we are confident as a company that we could reach lower costs through sourcing materials and production overseas, like many of our competitors, we are not willing to sacrifice our commitment to U.S. Manufacturing and our loyal customers who support these values. 

VPA continues to expand our product line and grow our productions to not only supply other U.S. based companies with product, but also employ more workers at our facility. VPA is a brand that any American and Archer would be proud to support.