Citibank Royally Screws Up In Closing Account For Gay Social Networking Site

02/28/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Citibank is facing a potential problem within the LGBT community. Recently, they shut down the bank account of a business known as fabulis. According to their website, “fabulis.com is the network that connects gay men with amazing experiences down the block and around the world. fabulis will be launching on the web and on the iPhone in the spring of 2010.” Citibank stated that their account was shut down due to objectionable material with regards to the content of the site.

Fabulis is the brainchild of Jason Goldberg. Previously, Goldberg founded Jobster and socialmedian. For his current project, he has raised more than $62 million in seed money from places like the Washington Post, and he aims to create the largest social networking site for gay men in the world.

Citibank apparently suffered from some of the same anti-LGBT problems that once plagued video game company Blizzard in their World of Warcraft mega-MMO. That is, a certain amount of confusion regarding the nature of what is and is not acceptable with regards to the LGBT Community. While Blizzard settled the lawsuit and made it quite clear to their employees that advertising for an LGBT friendly guilds, it is as yet unclear just how Citibank will respond in the long run. Every year, one guild on Proudmoore server still holds a Pride parade.

Citibank currently holds the contract for Federal employee’s official credit cards. Those cards, incidentally, are intended for official business such as out of town travel.

According to Goldberg, he was not notified regarding the closure of the account. He also stated “In a bit of strange and disturbing news, fabulis discovered today that someone(s) at Citibank had decided arbitrarily to block fabulis’ bank account due to what was described to us on the phone as “objectionable content” on our blog.” He also questioned when did Citibank start reviewing the content on websites with regards to their content.

Relaying what happened in trying to sort out this mess, Goldberg went on to write: “Do I think Citibank or Citigroup is a homophobic malicious company? No. Do I think some compliance officer is a moron who made a really stupid decision? Yes. Three hours of trying to sort this out provided even more comedic insanity than I even revealed on the blog post. Including a bank manager who didn’t want to talk about this because she was uncomfortable talking about the content of our blog over a recorded phone conversation. Oh, and we’ve learned that the account was marked to be a cancelled by said compliance officer for this ‘objectionable content.’”

Citibank did, eventually, apologize. Manhattan Branch Manager Bill Brown offered an apology and stated that the three people that Goldberg talked to were mistaken in their rationale for closing the account. Mr. Brown will do a full review of all the facts regarding this case and act appropriately.

Does Citibank Suffer From Homophobia Or Just A General Dislike For Startups?