McDonald's accused of homophobia in Wi-Fi service

File photo / Herald on Sunday

McDonald's is being accused of homophobia after it blocked gay websites from its new free Wi-Fi service at its restaurants.

People trying to access the lifestyle website GayNZ.com discovered they could not find the site, among others, and the website challenged the fast-food giant - which offers free WiFi access in 132 of its restaurants nationwide - to review its access policy.

"McDonald's must by now be able to find a more sophisticated way of judging the suitability of actual content for your restaurants rather than just blocking out wholesale an entire site which provides much valuable and family-friendly lifestyle information and service."

There appeared to be no consistency in McDonald's policy, GayNZ.com said.

A NZ Aids Foundation site was not blocked but Family Planning, Rainbow Youth, Agender and others were.

However, McDonald's said it was a family restaurant chain, and as part of offering the Wi-Fi service, its policy was that content must be of a family friendly nature, or suitable for a child to view.

"Because of this, access to a number of websites is blocked, including access to GayNZ.com, gambling, tobacco and adult mature content websites," a McDonald's spokeswoman said.

"You will also appreciate that there are inevitably teething problems with the introduction of a new service and getting our filtering process right is one such issue.

McDonald's said it was happy to review websites on a case by case basis, if customers believe that sites have been unjustifiably blocked.

However, all links and advertisements must also be acceptable.

- NZPA