A Connecticut court has handed down a 1 billion dollar fine on radio host and independent journalist Alex Jones, for “spreading misinformation” about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.
This is a travesty, and that any could call such an absurd penalty “justice” is sickening. Especially when it is so obviously designed as warning to everyone in the independent media.
Indeed, outside of the specifics of this case, the potential fallout for everyone in the alt-media sphere is terrifying, because already the Jones precedent is being used as an argument for “regulation” of the internet.
Forget about Sandy Hook. Maybe it happened or maybe it didn’t, experience teaches us that virtually nothing happens exactly as the media reports, but even if it did – even if every single word Alex Jones ever said about Sandy Hook was a deliberate lie – you cannot “regulate” that, you cannot make it a crime, and you cannot silence people’s future for words they have said in the past.
That is censorship.
People have the right to free speech. And that includes – MUST include – the right to lie and the right to simply be wrong.
If you take away those rights, you put the power to regulate speech in the hands of those with enough influence to create official “truth” or hold the “right” opinions. And that has nothing to do with objective truth, or real facts.
The media, and the establishment it serves, do not care about truth or facts.
To take a recent example, a Pfizer executive recently reported the pharmaceutical giant never did any research to ascertain if their Covid “vaccine” halted transmission of the “disease” commonly called Covid.
There was never any trial data showing the “vaccines” prevented transmission of “covid”, and that means every outlet, channel or pundit who claimed the vaccine “stopped the spread” was actively “spreading misinformation”.
What’s more this misinformation has likely led to literally thousands of deaths. That is far more harmful than anything anyone could say about a ten-year-old school shooting, real or not.
Will CNN or The Guardian or the NYT face a billion-dollar fine?
Of course they won’t. Because this is not about “misinformation”, this is about uncontrolled information. It is about regulating – even criminalising – the free flow of ideas and opinions.
Even if this kind of rule were equally applied to all media on every topic, it would be still awful… and we all know it won’t be.
Instead, it will be applied to the independent media, to alternative and anti-establishment voices, and to the internet.
If you doubt that, check the media reaction.
One argument against the need for any new regulation of free speech is that we already have legal systems in place to protect people from “harmful speech” – threats, libel and defamation.
Indeed, Jones’ fate here could be held up as a prime example of “the system working”.
But that is not enough, according to this article on NPR which bemoans the “limits” of de-platforming and defamation suits.
That opinion is shared by this article on NBC, which headlines “Alex Jones’ lawsuit losses are not enough”, and concludes:
Defamation lawsuits are an important tool in the quest to reduce harm from harassment and abuse. But they are not a solution to the lie machines built by incredibly savvy, incredibly cynical pundits like Alex Jones. This week’s verdict, coupled with whatever else happens next, will certainly make conspiracy theorists think twice before they inflict pain on private individuals in the future. But it will not solve the bigger problem, which is our world’s dangerous, pervasive flood of misinformation.
That line about “making conspiracy theorists think twice” is the most honest sentence in the article, and confirms one of the major aims of the Jones trial narrative is to set an example.
But while the point of the article could not be clearer, the author never actually uses the words “regulation”, “legislation” or “censorship”. He chooses to play a more subtle game than that.
The same cannot be said for Simon Jenkins in yesterday’s Guardian, who eschews subtlety completely:
Only proper online regulation can stop poisonous conspiracists like Alex Jones
“Proper online regulation”. We all know what that means, it means censorship. He’s not even hiding it in coy language, but openly arguing for a global censorship programme.
He begins by pining for the days when nobody could get a scrap of the public’s attention without going through approved channels:
There have always been Alex Joneses spreading poison from the world’s soap boxes and pavements. As a boy I used to listen to them at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park […] Their lies never made it into newspapers or on to the airwaves. Free speech went only as far as the human voice could carry. Beyond that, “news” was mediated behind a wall of editors, censors and regulators, to keep it from gullible and dangerous ears.
Imagine the kind of mind that is nostalgic for an age when “News” – he is right to use quotes – had to pass through a “wall of editors, censors and regulators”. Imagine being able to simply dismiss the multitude of the public as “gullible and dangerous”.
From there he moves on to praise the verdict against Jones, and the state-backed censorship exhibited by the major social media platforms, but laments it does not go far enough, even hinting that people should have their own private websites confiscated:
The main social media outlets have accepted a modicum of responsibility to monitor content […] attempts are made to keep up with a deluge of often biased and mendacious material, but […] by the time it is taken down it re-emerges elsewhere. Jones has been banned by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but he can still reach audiences on his own website […] Justice is meaningless without enforcement or prevention.
Next, he tells us who exactly will be in the crosshairs of this suggested global censor. It’s a predictable list:
victims may have the rule of law on their side, but that does not curb the climate deniers, anti-vaxxers, trolls and QAnon followers or the appalling and anonymous abuse that now greets the expression online of any liberal – I might say reasonable – point of view.
Alongside a “no true Scotsman” fallacy altering the definition of free speech:
No one seriously believes free speech is an absolute right.
Like all censors before them, modern censors such as Jenkins seek to codify their desire for control in the language of concern. Proselytizing about the need to “protect people” and “the greater good”. They would, they claim, only censor harmful lies.
Such is the call of the censor through the ages. We’re only censoring heresy, we’re only censoring blasphemy, we’re only censoring treason.
Jenkins is aware of this, even as he uses special pleading to argue his version of censorship would be different:
Historians of the news media can chart a progress from early censorship by the church and crown to state licensing and legal regulation. This control was initially employed to enforce conformity, but over the past century it has also sought to sustain diversity and suppress blatant falsity.
The hypocrisy is rank. “Maybe they used to enforce conformity, but of course we would never do that…we just want to silence people who disagree, for society’s sake.”
Of course, none of those who seek to control the speech of their fellow humans ever claim to want to censor the truth. They call it “sedition” or “propaganda”, and claim to be safeguarding “the truth” even as they pull out tongues or break their victims on the rack.
Now they call it “Misinformation”. It’s all the same in the end.
One more time, for the people at the back.
Free speech is NOT reserved for people who are “right”.
Free speech is NOT only for people who tell “the truth”.
Free speech is NOT to be moderated by “a wall of editors and regulators”.
Free speech is not a privilege in the gift of the state, a commodity to be regulated by the government or a child’s toy to be punitively confiscated by grown-ups who know better.
It is a right. For everyone. Everywhere. Always.
And if it is removed from one of us, it is removed from all of us.
I want to talk about Dr Aseem Malhotra. After the press conference on 27 September, there were concerns from some circles that World Council for Health was associating itself with Dr Malhotra. While some regard him as ‘controlled opposition’, others object to his lack of questioning vaccines in general, given Covid-19 “vaccine” and pharmaceutical industry corruption revelations.
We are living through interesting times. As the institutions entrusted with public service and care, reveal themselves to have betrayed our trust, as vaccine harms become ever harder to shove under the carpet, and as governments become ever more incompetent and unaccountable, we find ourselves apparently cast adrift on a turbulent sea, understandably wondering who is our enemy and who is our friend.
What helps me stay centred and free from fear, is the 7 Principles of A Better Way. They came out of the collective wisdom shared in May’s Better Way Conference, and they are a lodestar in these times of extreme pressure.
One of the Principles is:
We value different perspectives.
We celebrate respectful discussion as the means to ever more refined knowledge, compassion and wisdom.
It is in the spirit of this noble principle that we hosted Dr Malhotra’s press conference. Not all of us agree with his view that traditional vaccines are safe and effective. But we do agree that the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out should be halted immediately, and this is something that World Council for Health has been calling for almost since its inception. Dr Malhotra’s press conference has been viewed well over 100,000 times. Many wrote to us to say that they would be sharing it with their loved ones as it was just the thing that would reach them and get them thinking.
My hope is that his courageous efforts will, in particular, reach doctors and other medical professionals – those who are questioning the ‘safe and effective’ narrative but are afraid to speak up. They are certainly under the cosh: on Friday, California’s Governor Gavin Newsome signed a bill that means any doctor can lose their licence for sharing ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ about Covid-19. In Queensland, Australia, a similar bill is being presented to Parliament next week that goes even further, prohibiting doctors from giving any advice or opinion that goes against public health edict. Governments are going out of their way to shut doctors up, and while that may be terrifying for doctors – and their patients – it is also an indication of the power doctors hold. Governments know that if enough doctors speak up, the ‘safe and effective’ narrative will quickly crumble.
How we treat Dr Malhotra may be a deciding factor as to whether other doctors follow suit to stand up for medical ethics and their patients. Will we welcome them with gratitude and compassion, or shun them for not having spoken up sooner? This is a personal question for each of us, and one that we will all have to reckon with at some point. Is it for us to judge and does it serve the highest good of all to do so?
There are those who benefit from us dividing ourselves and each other into the binary camps of friend or foe. Of debating whether this or that person is controlled opposition, or bona fide. In this endless speculation we exhaust our precious life force, and find ourselves lacking the energy to create a better way.
If we can just relax and remember ourselves and why we are here, we can reclaim the broader view: that humanity is inherently fallible and yet capable of the most extraordinary acts of redemption. That we are all beings of light, but that we each have our own darkness as well. And, that we are all redeemed in the light of compassion for ourselves and each other.
This Saturday 15th October, we are holding a UK Doctors Conference in London. Our wish is for every doctor and health professional to feel they are welcome. It will be a safe and private space for people to ask questions, learn more about what’s really going on, and speak freely with each other. Please watch NHS Consultant Dr Julia Wilkens’ invitation (click on the image to view) – she could not have put the value of being there any better:
Please share this event widely: there is still space and we want as many people as possible to come together and realise that they are not a sole dissenter but one of many ready to question, to inquire, and understand.
‘Winning Doctors Back One at a Time’ Hearts of Oak podcast
I recently returned to the highly informative Heart of Oak podcast to speak about doctors, health, and of course the doctors conference. I really enjoyed our conversation – if you’d like to tune in, you’ll find it on the Hearts of Oak home page here.
House Energy and Commerce Committee member Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) proposed a resolution to ask The White House to submit documents on its efforts to coerce Big Telecom companies to censor certain media organizations and the pressure on the FCC to regulate Big Tech. The resolution was backed by ranking member Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA).
We obtained a copy of the resolution for you here.
The resolution states: “This resolution requests from the President certain information and documents that concern regulating the content of multichannel video programming distributors (e.g., cable operators), broadcast stations, and video streaming services. The resolution also requests information or documents in which the President asks the Federal Communications Commission to take action to regulate Big Tech.”
The resolution came after telecoms like AT&T’s DirecTV blocked One America News Network (OAN) after pressure from Democrats on the committee, which has oversight over tech companies and telecoms, voted against the resolution, Breitbart reported.
Following the vote, Rep. Carter blasted Democrat’s, accusing them of trying to hide the truth about the Biden administration’s censorship efforts.
“Unfortunately, the left is waging a war on our right to free speech,” said Rep. Carter. “Every single committee Democrat voted against my commonsense resolution to require the FCC be transparent about politically-motivated censorship.
“The Biden Administration and Washington Democrats are keeping information out of the hands of the American people – information we deserve to have. What do they have against transparency? What do they have to hide? Free speech is a First Amendment right for a reason. Without it, we don’t have a democracy.”
Title says it all – the evil of Mandates, when they had to know they served no purpose but… totalitarianism and control! Great one to share with normies, as all the data is packed in here too.
NOTE: My extensive research and interviewing / video/sound editing, business travel and much more does require support – please consider helping if you can with monthly donation to support me directly, or one-off payment: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=69ZSTYXBMCN3W – alternatively join up with my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IvorCummins
I’ve just been included in a nonsense propaganda publication! A book no less – publishing tomorrow Oct 6th – “Web of Lies”. Unbelievable deceit dripping through the piece they decided to share with me before publication – and stunningly incorrect throughout. Btw if referring to this book or sharing thoughts, always use the hashtag #WebOfLies – and PLEASE don’t comment if talking depopulation, radio waves or any other such stuff – always stick to the pandemic response ‘science’, and to published science/data – I never associate with anything other than the latter, as you should well know… 😠
That said, this vid will give you and your friends/family an invaluable education on how these guys craft propaganda. Enjoy, while I blow their deceit out of the water with trivial ease – directly from the published data – as always 😉 p.s. the white paper I sent them – a key resource to download and share: https://thefatemperor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Evidence-For-and-Against-the-Effectiveness-of-Lockdown-Policies-DRAFT-RevC.pdf
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding.
Insinuating that the lab leak hypothesis is a racist conspiracy theory is anti-science;
Closing international borders to keep a virus out when the virus is already established in-country is anti-science;
Panicked killing of Danish mink was anti-science. Public health apologizing for the mistake is pro-science;
Redefining herd immunity to exclude immunity conferred by disease recovery is anti-science;
Sending covid infected patients back to nursing homes to keep hospital beds empty was anti-science;
Lockdowns and other trickle down epidemiology are anti-science;
Science bureaucrats using their power to smear scientists who disagree with them is anti-science;
Instituting lockdowns & restrictions on the basis of overly-simplistic covid models is anti-science;
Pretending there is a scientific consensus on lockdown and so much else when there is not a scientific consensus (Especially while censoring sceptical voices) is anti-science;
Arbitrarily dividing society into essential and non-essential is anti-science;
Ignoring the obvious and devastating economic costs of policy is anti-science;
Censorship of scientific debate is anti-science. Literally.
Zoom school is anti-science;
Politically partisan public health is anti-science;
Not permitting healthy people to leave home for more than an hour, even for exercise, is anti-science;
Jumping off the sidewalk to avoid the breath of an unmasked person walking by is anti-science;
Shutting down kids’ sports is anti-science;
Public health shaming people for not following public health diktats is anti-science;
Forcing school kids to eat six feet apart from each other, outdoors and in silence was anti-science;
Redefining health to be synonymous with the avoidance of a single infectious disease is anti-science;
Six-foot social distancing is anti-science;
Not letting family members visit dying relatives is anti-science;
Contact tracing to contain a highly infectious and aerosolized respiratory virus is anti-science;
Zero covid is anti-science;
Mask mandates are anti-science;
White washing the harm done to children by school closures by glibly asserting that ‘kids are resilient’ is anti-science;
Institutionalized hypochondria is anti-science;
Masking toddlers is anti-science;
Requiring waiters to mask to serve unmasked patrons is anti-science;
Noble lies are bad public health practice and anti-science;
Pharmaceutical company funding of on-air news media and professional medical organizations is anti-science;
Policing private doctor patient communication for non-CDC approved content is anti-science;
Science & medicine are the common inheritance of all, regardless of party. Medical and scientific professional societies officially endorsing political candidates and thereby alienating half the population is anti-science;
Not rapidly running randomized trials to evaluate off-patent early treatment options and denigrating doctors and patients who tried them (“horse paste”) when better options were not available is anti-science;
Ignoring age-stratification in risk in determining pandemic policy and vaccine recommendations is anti-science;
Vaccine discrimination is socially divisive and is anti-science;
Public health experts have an obligation to speak respectfully with everyone, including people who oppose their recommendations (such as on vaccines). Guilt-by-association attacks on experts who fulfil this obligation are anti-science;
Asserting that a vaccine stops transmission when it does not stop transmission is anti-science;
Ignoring immunity after covid recovery is anti-science;
Vaccine mandates have demolished public trust and are anti-science;
Pausing childhood vaccination programs and tuberculosis treatment in poor countries because of fear of covid led to many unnecessary deaths and is anti-science;
Ignoring legitimate vaccine injury is anti-science;
Declaring oneself to be The Science itself is anti-science;
In its current “Acceptable Use Policy,” which has been active for a year, PayPal states that: “Violation of this Acceptable Use Policy constitutes a violation of the PayPal User Agreement and may subject you to damages, including liquidated damages of $2,500.00 U.S. dollars per violation which may be debited directly from your PayPal account(s).”
And PayPal’s list of “prohibited activities,” which can trigger this $2,500 fine, include any activities that relate to transactions involving “intolerance that is discriminatory,” “the promotion of hate,” and “items that are considered obscene.”
Not only is PayPal reserving the right to fine users based on broad and subjective terms but its “User Agreement” states that PayPal will fine users if it “believe[s]” they’ve engaged in a prohibited activity.
“If we believe that you’ve engaged in any of these activities, we may take a number of actions to protect PayPal, its customers and others at any time in our sole discretion,” the PayPal User Agreement states.
And even when it doesn’t fine users, there are many examples of PayPal suddenly shuttingdownuseraccounts for alleged violations of its Acceptable Use Policy.
“This bill would designate the dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct. The bill would also make findings and declarations in this regard.”
Any information doctors give that publicly contradicts state messaging on the COVID-19 virus, COVID vaccines, and prevention and treatment information is now “unprofessional conduct.”
Misinformation, as defined by the bill, refers to “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”
In other words, the state now has legal grounds to strip doctors of their medical licenses if they publicly disagree with its COVID related messaging.
In response to Newsom’s new law, the Liberty Justice Center quickly filed a lawsuit against the state’s Medical Board and Attorney General on behalf of two doctors.
“Science is not static. By its very nature science is constantly evolving and the subject of unending debate,” the Justice Center states.
“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and other public health authorities have constantly shifted their public presentation of the scientific data. Governor Newsom himself closed schools and even outdoor spaces— policies now widely acknowledged as unscientific and harmful.”
Last month, in another bizarre display of scientific tyranny, the UN’s Global Communications representative Melissa Fleming said, “We own the science.”
Fleming was speaking to the World Economic Forum’s “disinformation” panel.
“We’re becoming much more proactive. We own the science, and we think that the world should know it, and the platforms themselves also do,” she said.
In Canada, provincial health boards have threatened medical professionals who go against their messaging.
Earlier this year, 40 doctors from Ontario were under “investigation” for COVID-19 related decisions that went outside the province’s orders.
Yesterday, #DeletePayPal was trending on Twitter. This is not an expression of solidarity with the Daily Sceptic, although PayPal’s attempt to close our account, along with that of the Free Speech Union and my personal account, seems to have been the beginning of the company’s recent difficulties. Rather, it is a response to a change to its Acceptable Use Policy that the company announced last week, whereby it was about to grant itself the right to fine customers $2,500 if they spread “misinformation” or offended members of various victim groups. By “fine” it meant help itself to $2,500 from its customers’ deposits, so, not surprisingly, many people decided to withdraw their funds and close their accounts. That, in turn, prompted PayPal to do a reverse ferret and announce that its message setting out the changes to its Acceptable Use Policy had been sent in “error”. Cue general hilarity, including this tweet from Brendan Carr, a Commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission: “@PayPal says its misinformation policy ‘went out in error’. Because who among us has not fat fingered a new, seven-page policy that would take away peoples’ money for publishing ‘misinformation’ – and then released that new policy on accident?”
I suspect many of PayPal’s customers won’t be reassured by this change of heart and will continue to be wary of the woke payment processor. Consequently, I thought it would be useful to reprint a guide to closing your account produced by BGR.
First things first: Make sure to withdraw any money you have remaining in your PayPal account before you get ready to close it. Click that link to learn how to do so — and then, once any lingering issues or balance is taken care of, here’s how you’ll delete your PayPal via the company’s website.
Click the Settings icon, next to the words “Log out”.
Click Close your account under “Account options”.
Enter your bank account number if you’re asked to do.
Finally, click Close Account.
If you want to delete your PayPal account from the app instead:
First, log into the app.
Click on the Profile icon in the upper-left corner.
Scroll down until you see the option to Close your account.
After tapping Close your account, next click on the Close Account button.
One final, important note: Any unpaid money requests are automatically canceled after closing your PayPal account. Also, you will lose any unused redemption codes or coupons.
If you need further guidance, Tech Insider has produced a video guide.
Stop Press: A reader reports that when he tried to close his account he got a message saying: “We’re sorry, we’re not able to process your request right now. Please try again later.” I wonder if PayPal’s recent behaviour has produced the digital equivalent of a run on the bank and it cannot now return its customers deposits because it’s invested them in financial products it cannot now liquidate without incurring large losses? If anyone else is having difficulty closing their PayPal account, please contact us here.
Joe Rogan had Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner on his Joe Rogan Experience podcast last Wednesday and, among other topics, the pair touched on the government regulating the internet and the media landscape today.
Wenner – a magazine magnate who, according to reports, was in the past a prominent donor to Democratic candidates and liberal groups – spoke in favor of regulating the internet like any other industry in the US – although for some reason prefacing his “yes, but” argument by saying that the internet is great and that he “loves” social media.
But – he continued, it has to be regulated, and when Rogan asked by whom, Wenner replied, “the government.”
The question then became whether the government can be trusted with a job of such nature and magnitude – particularly given its credibility issues.
But Wenner appeared unwavering in his support of the internet – that is today heavily influenced by the authorities- tomorrow also becoming more formally regulated by them. “Absolutely,” he replied, when asked whether he trusted the White House to do a good job.
Rogan, otherwise not known for mincing his words, recalled that the US was plunged into the Iraq War under false pretenses (of WDMs) made by the government (and, to be fair, heavily promoted by their media mouthpieces like the New York Times ).
Trusting the class of people who did that did not seem to sit well with the host.
“Do you think that makes any sense,” he asked Wenner, who made a curious attempt at arguing that it was politicians specifically, rather than the government, who led the US into a war.
But that is government, responded Rogan.
He then went on to explain why he does not share Wenner’s enthusiasm for a government-regulated internet. If internet regulation comes from people in power, Rogan deduced, “they’re gonna regulate it in a way that suits their best interest.”
The podcast star also had other examples of what happens to industries whose rules are prescribed by the government, such as energy, banking, environment – and really, in Rogan’s words, “everything.”
“You’re talking about so much money involved in disseminating information,” Rogan noted, adding that he believes in society that adopts ethic norms “that respects truth and (…) appreciates opinions and reality and an understanding of things that’s not necessarily possible with corporate interest involved in dissemination of information.”
Wenner then asserted that, “there’s no way that you can do that except through the government… Human nature’s not gonna change” – to which Rogan retorted, “but the government’s not gonna change either.”
And yet, while Wenner has no faith in human nature, he seems optimistic about – those in power.
“But the government is capable of change,” he said.
Twitter has reversed its censorship of Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo after public backlash.
Ladapo was censored by the platform after he posted a tweet advising men between the ages of 18-39 to avoid the Covid vaccine as it had, he alleged based on a study, been found to cause an 84 percent increase in death rate for that group.
Ladapo’s statement and report were released on Friday, with the Surgeon General adding Florida “will not be silent on the truth.”
The published guidance “recommends against the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for males ages 18-39 years old.”
Ladapo said that “Studying the safety and efficacy of any medications, including vaccines, is an important component of public health. Far less attention has been paid to safety and the concerns of many individuals have been dismissed – these are important findings that should be communicated to Floridians.”
Twitter removed the post by the public official, claiming the tweet violated “Twitter rules.”
However, the post was reinstated on Sunday after backlash from the public.
“This is an unacceptable and Orwellian move for narrative over fact,” said Bryan Griffin, the governor’s press secretary, in a further tweet.
With the stock prices of both Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank under pressure, many in the financial field are becoming concerned the world could be facing a renewed financial crisis. But this time around events could play out very differently. It might not even be banks that pose the greatest financial risk to consumers. It could be payment providers like PayPal.
The really big difference between 2007 and 2022 is that bank runs no longer look like the image above, they look like this:
That’s what I was faced with when I tried to transfer £500 from my PayPal account to a regular bank account. On Sunday morning the same message was still occurring. A quick scan of social media proved I was not alone.
“Boycott PayPal” was also trending on Twitter.
So what might the error message indicate about the business?
Here’s what we know so far.
In the last 48 hours a sneaky amendment to PayPal’s acceptable use policy widely captured the public’s attention. Free speech advocates had spotted that customers agreeing to the update would be allowing a sum of $2,500 to be lifted from their accounts if PayPal ever found them guilty of “sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials” that “promote misinformation” or “present a risk to user safety or wellbeing”.
When word got out, those already concerned about the company’s draconian turn started shutting their accounts and urging others to do the same on social media.
For some, the action proved the final straw.
On Saturday evening U.K. time, PayPal’s former president David Marcus distanced himself very clearly from the action. Elon Musk, whose pathway to billionairehood started in 2000 when his company X.com was merged with Peter Thiel’s Confinity to create the PayPal of today, later tweeted that he agreed.
Readers of the Daily Sceptic and members of the Free Speech Union (such as myself) will already know that over the past few months PayPal has been on a whirlwind tour of shutting down the accounts of platforms and media sites it has deemed guilty of spreading misinformation. In many instances, those affected, such as the Daily Sceptic, were not even consulted ahead of the fact and had little idea of what specific text, post or media had violated PayPal terms.
So why exactly would PayPal descend to this level of reputational self-harm?
It’s hard to know for sure, but chances are the decision rests on pressures PayPal itself is facing with respect to its legal duty to enforce Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules. If I was to take an educated bet, it’s the counterterrorism section of the rulebook that is most relevant.
These days it’s hard to imagine that banks weren’t always responsible for screening transactions and making judgements about their legitimacy. But until the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was formed in 1989 with a view to combatting money laundering, banks only really cared about screening credit risk. It wasn’t until 2001 and the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers (and the introduction of the Patriot Act) that the scope of banks’ responsibilities in this field was expanded to include combatting the financing of terrorism too.
Tackling terrorist financing and criminality was easy enough when everyone was on the same page about what constituted terrorism or financial crime. But one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. And in an increasingly polarised world, it’s become harder for ordinary bank employees to differentiate free-speech critical of authority from radicalising terrorist content, such as that distributed by Isis on social media to recruit new members.
It wasn’t the job they were hired to do.
Three factors have muddied the waters further.
The first is the scale of penalties directed at banks found in breach of AML/KYC regulation. The fear of being slammed with fines has made banks and payment providers like PayPal hugely risk-averse and inclined to err on the side of caution when facing any ambiguity. If something even whiffs of misinformation, from their point of view it’s better to shut it down than to run the risk of getting a fine.
Second, is a lack of resources. Human arbitration is costly, and screening activities would be unaffordable if they were to be done by living, breathing individuals. This is why banks and payment providers like PayPal have invested huge sums of money in cost-saving screening technology to detect illegal transactions both actively and preemptively. The problem here is that most of these tools, known as suptech or regtech, are algorithmically applied with limited human oversight. That means it’s mostly artificial rather than human intelligence deciding who gets to stay on a platform and who gets frozen out. As yet, robots are not well known for their sense of nuance, empathy or capacity to process ambiguity. How they decide what they decide is a black-box interpretation of the inputs they’ve been programmed with.
The third issue is the structure of the KYC/AML policing system itself. Since the scale of the task is so enormous, it goes beyond the scope and capacity of any existing government agency. Knowing this, governments, very similar to how they managed the enforcement of lockdown policy, realised it would be more cost-efficient to outsource the policing of their own rules to the banks and payment companies directly. But this is a strategically coercive dynamic. If payment companies don’t fall in line, they risk having their licences removed and their businesses shut down. Non-compliance is therefore not an option. PayPal isn’t perfect, but the pressure it is facing is very similar to the pressure pubs, restaurants and supermarkets faced under Covid. The structural problem here, as with the retail sector during Covid, is those payment companies are not legislative specialists. They take for granted that the governments know what they are doing and that the rules they are setting are human rights compatible and in line with the laws of the land. Nor do the payment companies have the capacity to investigate the rights and wrongs of every case. This is a job for the legal system, which is already excessively costly to access for most ordinary individuals.
This in itself is a huge blind spot for the financial system. There’s a very strong case to be made that the way democratic governments have gone about enforcing AML legislation is not compatible with human rights at all. The enshrined right of habeas corpus might even be under threat. The FATF has itself belatedly realised this. Back in October 2021, it noted in a “stock-take on the unintended consequences of the FATF standards” that (my emphasis):
Situations have arisen in the course of FATF evaluations concerning the interaction between the FATF Recommendations on combating TF (particularly R.5 and R.6) and due process and procedural rights (e.g. to legal representation, fair trial, and to challenge designations, etc.), which have been considered on a case-by-case approach as they arise in specific country contexts. In addition, the FATF has also been made aware of instances of the misapplication of the FATF Standards, which are allegedly introduced by jurisdictions to address AML/CFT deficiencies identified through the FATF’s mutual evaluation or ICRG process, potentially as an excuse measures with another motivation. This information often comes as a result of stakeholder input or when the attention of the FATF or its members is drawn to a particular issue, such as when another international body is reviewing legislation or actions are taken by national authorities. Analysis in the stocktake has therefore focused on the due process and procedural rights issues most often arising in evaluations or feedback.
The stock-take identified the following factors as key examples of where misapplication of FATF standards had affected due process and procedural rights:
excessively broad or vague offences in legal counterterrorism financing frameworks, which can lead to wrongful application of preventative and disruptive measures including sanctions that are not proportionate;
issues relevant to investigation and prosecution of TF and ML offences, such as the presumption of innocence and a person’s right to effective protection by the courts;
and, incorrect implementation of UNSCRs and FATF Standards on due process and procedural issues for asset freezing, including rights to review, to challenge designations, and to basic expenses.
Readers can hopefully see the issue.
The entire regulatory system since 2008 has focused on ensuring that the 24-hour payment banking infrastructure we have become used to will never face the risk of going down again.
Put bluntly, the style of service disruption currently being experienced at PayPal is something major banking and payment institutions are not supposed to be able to get away with. At least not for long. So yes, it does feel like a big deal.
For the most part, the practice of shuttering access through website maintenance, downtime or error messages is more commonly seen at cryptocurrency platforms during extreme bitcoin selloffs. Closing access to people’s accounts or pretending to do website maintenance often gives operators the time to raise the liquidity they need by slowing redemptions. But it’s far from a transparent or honourable policy.
For PayPal to have triggered a run on itself because it was merely following government orders is not just unfortunate, it is careless. But it also speaks of a deeper problem at the heart of the anti-money laundering regulatory structure. The entire system we have created may no longer be fit for purpose. Consider, for example, that despite many billions of dollars spent on FATF compliance, a company like Wirecard, whose business model in retrospect looks to have been based on fraud as a service (FAAS), could so easily rise to the top of the German stock market. Nor has any of the regulation been successful at combatting the type of electronic financial fraud (mostly based on phishing attacks or social engineering) that impacts users every day.
We need to seriously ask if the benefits outweigh the collateral damage also being incurred.
But while PayPal might not be entirely responsible for its own actions on the KYC/AML front, its business model may be more vulnerable to this sort of fallout than most people appreciate. The culpability for that lies with PayPal exclusively.
A key revenue generator for the group has always been the interest revenue it absorbs from all the customer balances it holds. (You may not have realised it, but if you have any significant sums in a PayPal account, you won’t be collecting interest on them.) A large outflow of deposits could easily inhibit the company’s ability to raise this income and harm its overall revenue-generating capability. (You don’t have to hold balances at PayPal to use it.)
More critical for PayPal at this juncture will be its inability as a payments company to access the central bank lender-of-last-resort backstop. That means if the group is genuinely facing challenges meeting transfer and redemption requests, it will only be able to turn to wholesale liquidity markets to make up the difference. The degree to which customer balances are locked up in harder-to-liquidate securities or bonds will largely determine its success here. Frustratingly for PayPal, in the current illiquid bond market, there’s a good chance that selling these quickly and without a loss could be challenging. The alternative path for PayPal will be to use these securities as collateral for temporary loans. But the expense here is potentially open-ended if there are no obliging counterparts. That may (or may not) be why the company is currently restricting transfers.
Before rushing to conclusions, it’s important to stress the company still has recourse to liquidity from fully-funded (in fact over-collateralised) entities. We may not know the makeup of that liquidity, but solvency is unlikely to be an issue over the longer term. The biggest problem facing users today will be uncertainty over how quickly they can transfer funds out of the PayPal ecosystem.
What I can say is that in the modern digital age, bank runs will be different. We may even long for the days when tellers transparently shut up shop when the vaults ran dry. At least it was clear what was going on. These days, on the other hand, it will become ever harder to differentiate a bank run from a maintenance issue on a website. Such matters will be shrouded in plausible deniability and uncertainty. Suffice it to say, corporate communication departments will always err towards disinformation of their own sort, that any such outage is nothing out of the ordinary.
Even more concerning is that in the event of a run, customers will no longer be able to tell if those with better connections aren’t unfairly cutting ahead of them in the redemption queue. Virtual queues may seem technologically efficient, but there’s no transparency to them at all.
That’s why if you’re caught out by any of these policies you already don’t stand a chance of getting your account back unless you have existing connections to the management or a platform of your own. None of this is progressive or encouraging.
Izabella Kaminska is the Editor of the Blind Spot, a financial news media service focused on the news everyone else is missing.
PayPal was not contacted for this piece, which is based on the opinions of the author.
Two doctors on Tuesday became the first to file a federal lawsuit to stop a new California law that subjects the state’s doctors to discipline, including the suspension of their medical licenses, for sharing “misinformation” or “disinformation” about COVID-19 with their patients.
Dr. Mark McDonald, a Los Angeles psychiatrist, and Dr. Jeff Barke, an Orange County primary care physician and founding member of America’s Frontline Doctors, filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
The lawsuit names 12 members of the Medical Board of California and California Attorney General Robert Bonta.
The plaintiffs also filed papers seeking a preliminary injunction to protect their free speech rights as the case unfolds.
“[This new law] puts patients at risk. Requiring physicians to consider the state’s narrative when making a medical decision, is bad medicine and dangerous. Consensus in science only occurs when dissenting opinions are censored.”
Commenting on the lawsuit, Mary Holland, president and general counsel for Children’s Health Defense, said, “California’s new law is a clear violation of the First Amendment. It’s startling that the legislature and the governor would even attempt to pass such legislation.”
Holland added:
“Censoring information about health never leads to health, but it certainly can and has led to medical catastrophes. I look forward to courts striking this law down.”
The Los Angeles Times today reported that some doctors fear California’s new law “could do more harm than good.”
“What was misinformation one day is the current scientific thinking another day,” Dr. Eric Widera, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, told LA Times.
Liberty Justice Center, a national nonprofit law firm dedicated to protecting Americans’ constitutional rights, is representing McDonald and Barke.
Daniel Suhr, managing attorney at the center, said, “We rely on our doctors to give us their best medical advice, yet the State of California is stopping doctors from doing just that. That’s not just wrong, it’s unconstitutional.”
He added, “Doctors enjoy the same free speech rights as other Americans. The State of California cannot define a so-called scientific consensus on an issue and then punish anyone who dares challenge it.”
Law is ‘at odds with the scientific method itself’
California Assembly Bill 2098 (AB 2098), signed into law Sept. 30 by Gov. Gavin Newsom, defines “misinformation” as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care” and “disinformation” as “misinformation that the licensee deliberately disseminated with malicious intent or an intent to mislead.”
Newsom said the law applies only to physicians’ speech with patients during discussions directly related to COVID-19 treatment.
But Drs. McDonald and Barke allege AB 2098 violates the First Amendment, imposes “government-approved orthodoxy” and “is at odds with the scientific method itself.”
The lawsuit states:
“Disagreement is integral to the progress of medical science, a value that cannot be served by using the power of the state to punish those who dissent from the official line.
“This is particularly objectionable in the context of a new disease like COVID-19, about which consensus opinions and official guidance have regularly adjusted as new information is learned.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, public health authorities insisted that the public not wear masks, arguing they would provide little benefit and should be reserved for front-line medical professionals — that was soon replaced with broadly mandated mask wearing for much of the population.
“Schools were closed in the face of the fear that the disease would spread among children too young to adhere to quarantine procedures — but it turned out that the young were at the least risk, and that such closures may well have been harmful to their development.
“Reasonable minds disagreed then, and continue to disagree now, about any number of such topics, but the search for truth cannot be furthered by a government edict imposing orthodoxy from above, punishing those who disagree with the loss of their profession and their livelihood.”
The lawsuit also alleges that AB 2098 “intrudes into the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship” by “replacing the medical judgment of the government for that of the licensed professional and chilling the speech of those who dissent from the official view.”
The plaintiffs asked that the court “enjoin enforcement of AB 2098 and leave these important matters to the marketplace of ideas.”
AB 2098 was introduced in mid-February by California Assemblymember Evan Low — one of seven Democratic lawmakers who in January formed the Vaccine Work Group to develop legislation promoting the use of COVID-19 vaccines while “battling misinformation.”
The American Medical Association (AMA), which strongly supports the bill, hopes other states will follow suit in “ensuring that licensing boards have the authority to take disciplinary action against health professionals for spreading health-related disinformation,” according to a new policy adopted at its mid-June annual meeting aimed at addressing public health “disinformation.”
The AMA’s adopted policy expanded on prior efforts and called for the organization to work with “health professional societies and other relevant organizations to implement a comprehensive strategy to address health-related disinformation disseminated by health professionals.”
Language in the bill points out that the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) has warned that physicians who spread misinformation or disinformation “risk losing their medical license, and … have a duty to provide their patients with accurate, science-based information.”
The FSMB, as previously reported by The Defender, takes money from Big Pharma and has a history of challenging and attacking non-pharmaceutical medical approaches used by integrative doctors as falling outside the “standard of care” as they define it.
“If this period has taught us anything,” McDonald said, “it is that the scientific and medical environments are constantly evolving, as new information and studies confirm or reject prior policies.
He added:
“Doctors need the freedom to explore alternatives and share opinions that challenge the scientific consensus — that is inherent in the nature of the scientific enterprise.
“California cannot insert itself into the physician-patient relationship to impose its views on doctors and end all debate on these important questions.”
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.
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