She also compared banning influencers to banning women. Other influencers defended themselves by reminding their audiences that what they did was real work, and that their content amounted to free PR for these businesses, so they should stop complaining. To state the obvious: Encountering influencers doing their work in real life can be incredibly annoying and obstructive. To state the doubly obvious: Influencers are not a protected class, and banning them from a store does not constitute discrimination. But to defend one’s line of work simply by arguing that it’s "real work" is a weak argument.