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Elon Musk says PayPal is moving in the “direction of social credit”

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 5, 2022

“ seems to be moving in the direction of social credit and restricting transactions – that’s concerning,” PayPal co-founder, and now Tesla and  CEO, , said in a recent Spaces.

Last month, Twitter filed registration paperwork to pave the way for it to process payments, according to a filing with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, which was obtained by The New York Times.

Following that, Musk said that he envisioned users connecting their online bank accounts to the social media service, with the company moving later into “debit cards, checks, and whatnot.”

Following public backlash, PayPal recently abandoned a proposed update to its Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that would have led to penalties of $2,500 for spreading “misinformation.” However, the company still maintains a policy carrying similar penalties for “intolerance.”

The AUP prohibits the “promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance.” Free speech advocates feel that the policy is vague and is left to the interpretation of PayPal staff.

Aaron Terr, a senior program officer of the rights group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said at the time that the policy “suffers from the same defect as a lot of the other proposed prohibitions on speech, in that it’s vague.”

Terr added: “And it’s left open to interpretation by PayPal employees, and because of its vagueness, that gives them a lot of discretion to essentially just enforce that provision against disfavored speakers, and to do so in a viewpoint-discriminatory manner.”

The revoked misinformation policy update was condemned by PayPal founders. Co-founder Elon Musk said the update “goes against everything I believe in.”

December 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 1 Comment

PayPal is still threatening to fine users $2,500 for promoting “intolerance that is discriminatory”

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | October 12, 2022

While  has walked back its threat to fine users $2,500 for “misinformation,” the payments company is still reserving the right to fine users the same amount for other alleged transgressions.

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.

The terms that PayPal is using to justify these potential fines of up to $2,500 are often used by companies and governments to restrict online speech. One of the most relevant examples of this speech policing is fundraising platform GoFundMe’s decision to suspend a campaign from political commentator Candace Owens for “intolerance” over opinions on protests.

And even when it doesn’t fine users, there are many examples of PayPal suddenly shutting down user accounts for alleged violations of its Acceptable Use Policy.

Related: How to delete your PayPal account

October 12, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | | 2 Comments

PayPal to expand its speech restriction rules in November

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 1, 2022

On the heels of its censorship spree in the UK – that received backlash so great it got the attention of lawmakers – PayPal is rolling out a new agreement that gives itself more censorship powers and the ability to strip income from those who don’t abide to its speech rules.

Violation of the “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,” PayPal writes.

PayPal’s clause about taking users’ funds for a violation of its rules has long been established. But, as published on September 26th and to be effective on November 3rd, 2022, PayPal will add restrictions to its acceptable use policy that go beyond illegal activities and fraud and into the realm of policing speech.

The updated policy prohibits users from using PayPal for activities that:

“Involve the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing, or objectionable … (e) depict, promote, or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) … (g) are fraudulent, promote misinformation … or (i) are otherwise unfit for publication.”

Big Tech platforms are increasingly finding ways to punish people’s speech under the guise of banning 🛡 “misinformation,” and making themselves as the arbiters of truth in deciding what is and isn’t true.

Backlash at PayPal in the last week caused it to backtrack on its censorship of the Free Speech Union, its founder Toby Young, and his news website The Daily Sceptic after pushback from both sides of the British political spectrum.

Critics argued that the removal of the accounts was view-point discrimination.

PayPal never gave a specific reason for the suspension of the accounts. They only said that the accounts had violated the acceptable use policy.

After the accounts were removed, a spokesperson for the financial services provider said: “Achieving the balance between protecting the ideals of tolerance, diversity and respect for people of all backgrounds and upholding the values of free expression and open dialogue can be difficult, but we do our best to achieve it.”

PayPal was accused of ignoring the fact that defending someone’s right to free speech is not the same as promoting their views.

“Forgive me if I don’t leap for joy,” Young told The Telegraph after the accounts were reinstated. “The last two weeks have been a nightmare as I’ve scrabbled to try to stop The Daily Sceptic and Free Speech Union going under. PayPal’s software was embedded in all our payment systems, so the sudden closure of our accounts was an existential threat.”

PayPal has a strong history of censorship. In June, it banned the account of evolutionary biologist Dr. Colin Wright who researches the differences between the sexes.

Free speech advocacy groups have criticized PayPal for the lack of transparency and its lack of due process when freezing or closing accounts. The groups argue that the company should give users details on the policy that has been violated and an opportunity to appeal the decision.

When Dr. Wright asked why his account was suspended, he was told to “submit a subpoena.”

October 1, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

What’s the Best Way to Rein in Companies Like PayPal?

Dr. David McGrogan – The Daily Sceptic – September 27, 2022

It is encouraging that Tory MPs are taking seriously the threat to an open society posed by PayPal’s demonetisation of UsForThem, Toby Young, the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic. And it is more encouraging still that they are likely to respond to the threat through legislation – possibly through an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill. It is vital, however, that they get this response right, and understanding the purported legal basis for a company like PayPal excluding a user from its services is crucial in this regard.

To get some preliminary matters out of the way, it is important first to distinguish a financial services provider like PayPal from a social media outfit like Twitter or Facebook/Meta. There is a case to be made (although it is ultimately not one I would concur with) that it is legitimate for a social media operator to exclude people who express opinions deemed undesirable by its owners. I agree, for example, with the position that the Supreme Court adopted with respect to the baker in the famous ‘gay cake’ case; it is unconscionable for the law to force the owner of a private company to propagate a message that would conflict with said owner’s sincerely held beliefs. I think large social media providers are fundamentally different from the baker in that case, but I can at least understand the basis on which somebody would argue that Twitter booting, say, Andrew Tate, is essentially the same as a Christian baker refusing to bake a cake bearing a message supporting gay marriage (or, let’s say, a hypothetical Muslim printer refusing to print a satirical magazine bearing an image of the prophet). But there is no sense in which PayPal can be construed to be said to be in this position. PayPal does not serve to propagate messages of any kind; nor are its users even publicly known or identifiable for the large part; whether or not the Daily Sceptic is a customer of PayPal places no requirement on the latter to associate itself with the expression of any view whatsoever. It is a different kettle of fish.

It is also important to acknowledge that there are legitimate reasons for a business like PayPal seeking to exclude users who express certain kinds of views that might be connected with criminal offences, even indirectly. To use an obvious and extreme example, there would be nothing wrong with PayPal closing an account it discovered to be connected to an organisation dedicated to sharing positive perspectives on paedophilia; while a group of paedophiles getting together to talk about how wonderful their predilection is would not (I think) in itself constitute a criminal offence, it is easy to see why PayPal would wish to avoid coming within a barge-pole’s distance of any suggestion it was knowingly assisting such a group. However, this kind of concern clearly would not apply with respect to the FSU, UsForThem, the Daily Sceptic or Toby personally.

A company like PayPal cannot therefore fall back on these kinds of excuses in behaving as it has done. And in any case, we can all what is really going on here – it’s nothing to do with matters of conscience or a legitimate attempt to ‘de-risk’ with respect to potentially criminal behaviour. (It is notable, for example, that PayPal appears to be ‘intensely relaxed’ about the risks of being seen to be associated with precisely the kind of paedophile support group I mentioned earlier.) This is simply a case of somebody at PayPal wishing to send a statement: “We’re on the side of the good guys, and if you’re not on our side, mind your P’s and Q’s.” The fact that a very important set of elections is due to take place in the US in November undoubtedly has something to do with this.

It is therefore entirely legitimate for Parliament to legislate to prevent this kind of behaviour, and the question thus becomes: what form should such legislation take?

Looking at the underlying purported legal justification for PayPal’s conduct will give us an answer. The recent closure of the accounts of the Daily Sceptic et al seems to have been done on the basis that these respective parties have violated their respective User Agreements with PayPal. The User Agreement, it must be said, has not been particularly clearly drafted, but this much at least is clear: PayPal may close a user’s account if the user is in breach of its terms. The specific breaches themselves in this case were not, however, made particularly clear. Initially, it seemed that PayPal was accusing the Daily Sceptic et al of breaching its Acceptable Use Policy – namely item 2 (f) of that document, which prohibits the user engaging in ‘the promotion of hate, violence or other forms of intolerance’. This obviously wouldn’t stick, though, and subsequent statements by PayPal have suggested that the accounts were closed on the basis that the Daily Sceptic et al were ‘providing false, inaccurate or misleading information’, which is on the list of ‘restricted activities’ in the User Agreement proper.

The haphazard way in which PayPal appears to have conducted itself is suggestive that the decision was made to close the accounts first, with the justification being worked out afterwards. But we do now know what its legal representatives would trot out as the purported contractual basis for closing the accounts in question: being in breach of the User Agreement by engaging in the restricted activity of providing false, inaccurate or misleading information.

And this in turn would allow us to identify the remedy in the creation of a relatively short Act (or amendment to the Online Safety Bill). I am not a Parliamentary drafter, but my suggestion would be something along the lines of:

A provider of financial services may not by reference to any contract term terminate or suspend the provision of services to a user on the basis of that user spreading false, inaccurate or misleading information, or similar, unless it is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the spreading of said information would in itself constitute a criminal offence in the laws of England and Wales.

This would quite neatly prevent PayPal or any other such provider from doing this kind of thing in future, while allowing such operators to ‘de-risk’ for the legitimate reason of avoiding any connection to the commission of crime. The consequence would simply be to make a term of a contract between a financial services provider and a customer purporting to allow termination on the grounds of the spreading of false information, etc., unenforceable, and the legislation could be worded to give this immediate effect.

Dr. David McGrogan is Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School.

Stop Press: Allysia Finley has written a good comment piece for the Wall St Journal about why the Supreme Court may well uphold the law in Texas prohibiting large social media companies from blocking speech based on viewpoint.

September 27, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

PayPal Could Be Legally Prevented From Banning People For Their Political Views

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | September 26, 2022

Although PayPal has been banning conservatives and right-wingers for years, its recent move to terminate accounts operated by the Free Speech Union and other groups in the UK that opposed lockdowns and vaccine mandates has apparently been a step too far.

Following the controversy, dozens of Conservative Party MPs, including Michael Gove, David Davis and Sir Iain Duncan Smith, signed an open letter to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Business Department demanding that PayPal be legally barred from imposing discriminatory practices.

The letter asserts that it is “hard to avoid construing PayPal’s actions as an orchestrated, politically motivated move to silence critical or dissenting views on these topics within the U.K.”

This morning, the London Times also published a powerful piece by Jawad Iqbal which highlighted the dangers of allowing PayPal to abuse such powers.

“This is censorship by corporate diktat: the company sets its own rules and interprets them as it sees fit. It appears oblivious to the notion that it is wrong in principle to withdraw vital services from people because of their political views. Would it be acceptable for a supermarket to refuse to serve a customer because of their politics or for a high street bank to refuse to make a payment to a company it deemed politically objectionable?” asked Iqbal.

After questions were asked in Parliament about the issue, a new law could be on the cards that would put an end to PayPal’s crusade against dissident viewpoints.

“Conservative backbenchers are considering launching an amendment to upcoming financial legislation in the House of Commons that would ban companies from freezing campaigners’ accounts,” reports the Telegraph.

“One source said ministers are likely to accept the amendment to the law because Conservative backbenchers will support it.”

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has also demanded answers from PayPal.

The familiar old argument from leftists, who apparently now vehemently support monopolistic transnational corporations using their might and vast resources to impose censorship, is that “PayPal is a private company and can ban who it wants.”

However, at least in the UK, that isn’t strictly true.

PayPal is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which mandates “All firms must be able to show consistently that fair treatment of customers is at the heart of their business model.”

Fair treatment of customers clearly isn’t at the heart of PayPal’s business model, it’s literally the exact opposite.

September 26, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

PayPal shuts account of group who fought to keep schools open during pandemic

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 22, 2022

UsForThem, a UK parents’ group that campaigned to keep schools open during the pandemic, has been banned from PayPal because of “the nature of its activities.” The group says that after the ban, it is unable to access thousands of pounds in donations.

“We were completely taken aback to learn that PayPal was discontinuing our services ‘due to the nature of [our] activities’. No prior warning or meaningful explanation was given, and despite them saying we could withdraw our remaining balance, we cannot,” said the group’s co-founder Molly Kingsley to The Telegraph.

“UsForThem has only ever been fully transparent about the organization’s aims, and our mission statement is on a prominent page of our website for all to read. That makes clear that our core focus is campaigning for children to be prioritized in public decision-making.

“If something about that mission offends PayPal, why could they not be transparent about that? For a small volunteer organization, this has a significant impact on our ability to operate, as presumably was intended.

“It is extremely hard not to draw the conclusion that this is a politically motivated cancellation of an organization that in some way offends PayPal.”

Toby Young, Free Speech Union’s founder, also claimed PayPal banned his account for political motives. The Free Speech Union’s account was also banned, as well as the account of the non-profit Gays Against Groomers.

September 25, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

PayPal Demonetises the Daily Sceptic

BY TOBY YOUNG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | SEPTEMBER 21, 2022

If you’re a regular donor to the Daily Sceptic and got an email from me in the small hours of the morning telling you that PayPal had closed our account and urging you to set up a new donation with a link to our donate page, don’t panic. It wasn’t a scam. PayPal really has shut down our account and the email really was from me.

I’ll tell you the full story in a moment, but just to be clear – this won’t affect the majority of people making regular donations, just those whose donations are processed by PayPal. So unless you’ve received an email from me with instructions about how to donate without using PayPal, please don’t cancel your recurring donation. I repeat: Please don’t cancel your donation. This just applies to people whose donations are being processed by PayPal and I’ve written to all of you.

The first I heard about this was on Thursday afternoon last week when I received a notification from my personal PayPal account informing me that it was being shut down because I’d violated the company’s ‘Acceptable Use Policy’. I looked at that policy and it covers things like fraud and money laundering so my first thought was it must be a mistake. Then, a few minutes later, I got another notification, this one from the Daily Sceptic’s PayPal account. That, too, had been shut down and for the same reason. Eh? That was odd. Then, another email, this one from the Free Speech Union’s PayPal account. Same story – the Acceptable Use Policy.

Now call me a cynic, but the chances of all three accounts violating the same policy within minutes of one another struck me as a bit implausible. Was something else going on?

I contacted customer services and asked what I’d done, exactly, on my personal account that ran afoul of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy. I’ve had it since 2013 and use it, at most, four times a year, usually to receive money from a Swiss weekly magazine I occasionally write for.

The person I spoke to said she had no idea, but if I wanted I could “escalate“ the matter and someone higher up the food chain would get back to me. I did that, obviously, and a couple of days later received a notification that my appeal has been unsuccessful. No explanation offered beyond the original one. Oh, and by the way, it would be keeping the money in that account for up to 180 days while it decided whether it was entitled to “damages” for my yet-to-be-explained breach of its Acceptable Use Policy.

It was the same story with the other two accounts. The only clue as to what might be going on was a message sent a couple of days ago from PayPal on the now closed Daily Sceptic account. The crucial passage read:

PayPal’s policy is not to allow our services to be used for activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance. We regularly assess activity against our long-standing Acceptable Use Policy and carefully review actions reported to us, and will discontinue our relationship with account holders who are found to violate our policies.

That message was a bit weird since it didn’t explicitly accuse the Daily Sceptic of promoting “hate, violence or racial intolerance”, or say that that was how we’d violated its precious policy. But it certainly implied it. To which my response is: How exactly? Or, more profanely: What the f*** are you talking about?

Even if the Daily Sceptic is guilty of that sin – and I defy anyone to point to an article we’ve published that promotes “hate, violence or racial intolerance” – why is that a reason to shut down my personal account or the FSU account? I still haven’t received any indication of why that’s happened. And for what it’s worth, I’ve written to the CEO of PayPal UK – Vincent Belloc, you can email him here – and the Corporate Affairs Department of PayPal US and PayPal UK (you can email them here and here), asking for some kind of explanation. No reply, obviously. Laughably, it says on the media contact page of PayPal‘s website above the email addresses: “Reporter on a deadline? Looking to book an interview or need a comment for a story?” The implication is that someone from its crack Corporate Affairs team will get back to you immediately. But I emailed them last Thursday and still haven’t heard back.

I suspect what’s really going on is that someone at PayPal – possibly the entire C-suite – doesn’t like what the Daily Sceptic or the Free Speech Union stands for. The company has form in this area. As Matt Taibbi wrote earlier back in May:

In the last week or so, the online payment platform PayPal without explanation suspended the accounts of a series of individual journalists and media outlets, including the well-known alt sites Consortium News and MintPress.

Those sites – Consortium News and Mint Press – are both left wing and they’re opposed to the war in Ukraine, which is presumably why PayPal cancelled them. Is the fact that the Daily Sceptic has published articles critical of the mainstream narrative about that war – including one in which we linked to Mint Press – the reason we’ve been cancelled? Seems a bit harsh, given that we’ve also published several articles defending Ukraine and its war effort and debunking some of the criticisms of the current Ukrainian regime.

A number of sites that have raised questions about the Covid vaccines have also been demonetised by PayPal in the past few months, including the U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance. Liz Evans, the head of the UKMFA, also had her personal PayPal account closed at the same time.

Is that fact that we’ve published data suggesting the mRNA vaccines aren’t as efficacious or as safe as we were initially led to believe why we’ve been cancelled?

Colin Wright, a former colleague of mine at Quillette and a staunch critic of trans rights dogma, was deplatformed by PayPal in June, presumably because some people in the company didn’t approve of his gender critical views. We’ve expressed similar views on the Daily Sceptic. Was that the issue?

My hunch is it’s all of the above. PayPal just doesn’t like free speech, which is why it has shut down the FSU account at the same time. There are five issues in particular where it’s completely verboten to express sceptical views and if you do you can expect to be cancelled, not just by PayPal but by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.: the wisdom of the lockdown policy and associated Covid restrictions, the efficacy and safety of the mRNA vaccines, Net Zero and the ‘climate emergency’, the need to teach five year-olds that sex is a social construct and the war in Ukraine. Dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy in any of those areas is no longer permitted.

This is the new front in the ongoing war against free speech: the withdrawal of financial services from people and organisations that express dissenting opinions on those topics. And not just those who express them, but those who defend them, too, like the FSU. That‘s what makes this an escalation in the war on free speech. Until now, companies like PayPal, GoFundMe, Patreon and CrowdJustice have only demonetised individuals and groups whose views they disapprove of. Now, PayPal has closed the account of an organisation that defends people’s right to free speech, without taking sides on the issues they’re speaking about. Even that is no longer allowed, according to this Silicon Valley behemoth.

Fear not, comrades. I may not be able to use PayPal again in a personal capacity, but I’m confident the Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union will survive. Yes, we’ll take a hit, but I hope people who still believe in free speech and the importance of casting a sceptical eye over the prevailing orthodoxy will show their support by joining or donating.

To join the FSU, click here. To donate to the FSU, click here. And to donate to the Daily Sceptic, click here.

And rest assured, PayPal has been expunged from all our payment systems. There‘s zero risk that if you give money to either of those organisations it will be pocketed by the fintech Death Star.

I thought about launching a campaign to get PayPal to restore its services to the three accounts, but then decided I didn’t want to have anything more to do with the wretched company. Even if it did a reverse ferret, what guarantee is there it won’t demonetise us again? No, from now on I will have nothing more to do with PayPal and if you’re a customer of the company I hope you’ll follow suit. (Here is a handy YouTube video explaining how to close your PayPal account.)

Stop Press: If anyone reading this is a donor to the Daily Sceptic or a member of the FSU based in Texas, please get in touch. In Texas, it’s illegal for large social media companies to ban users’ posts based on their political viewpoints. Is PayPal a social media company? Users can send messages to each other so… maybe. Worth exploring.

September 23, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

German journalist in Donbass could face prison at home

Samizdat | June 29, 2022

Alina Lipp, an independent German journalist and blogger is facing a criminal probe at home over her “endorsement” of Russia’s “illegal aggressive war” against Ukraine. Lipp has told Russian media she only does what any journalist would do – document what is happening around her.

If found guilty, she could face a fine or up to three years behind bars.

On Saturday, RT DE interviewed Lipp about her professional work and the ongoing investigation.

The journalist contended that she is “doing interviews with people in Donetsk and merely translating them into German.”

“I am simply filming everything I see around,” Lipp added.

She inquired rhetorically “what is it that’s illegal in that, or dangerous?” The journalist insisted that none of her materials had been staged, and that there is no one telling her what to cover.

Lipp dismissed the German authorities’ investigation as “completely insane.”

When asked by the RT DE journalist whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was secretly commissioning her reports from Donbass, Lipp replied in the negative, adding jokingly “still not.”

The woman also lamented that a number of conspiracy theories have been spread about her.

One of those, according to Lipp, dates back to November 2021, when she sold three of her minute-long videos to “some Russian TV channel” that did not have its own correspondent on the ground. Lipp insisted that this was common practice among independent journalists who “sell their material to various buyers.”

This alone does not automatically prove that such a person takes orders from someone or “works for a Russian propaganda channel,” Lipp argued.

According to the German news website t-online, Germany’s law enforcement believes Lipp has been “constantly showing her solidarity with Russia’s war against Ukraine,” as well as fomenting a split in German society.

Her reporting was described by the authorities as “distorted, partially false.” She is also accused of spreading other outlets’ “completely fabricated” stories.

The probe was originally launched by the German public prosecutor’s office in Luneburg following multiple complaints, which have been filed since February. However, the prosecutor’s office in Gottingen, which specializes in internet hate crimes, has reportedly since taken over Lipp’s case.

According to t-online, Lipp, who was born to a German mother and a Russian father, has been living in Donetsk and Crimea since last fall. She runs a German-language news blog called ‘News from Russia,’ as well as a Telegram channel with over 174,000 followers and a video channel on PeerTube.

Since the start of the investigation, Germany’s DKV-Bank has seized the donations Lipp has received, with €1,600 ($1,679) said to be frozen from her account, according to t-online.

PayPal, too, has blocked her account, as well as that of her father, Lipp revealed in one of her earlier interviews.

June 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

PayPal seizes alternative media site’s money

Samizdat | May 3, 2022

Payment processor PayPal has frozen alternative media powerhouse Consortium News’ (CN) donation page without warning, confiscating the site’s $9,348.14 balance with no explanation beyond the claim that “an investigation and review” of the site’s “history” found “some potential risk associated with this account.”

CN was informed via email on Sunday that it couldn’t use PayPal anymore and told “we noticed activity in your account that’s inconsistent with our User Agreement and we [can] no longer offer you PayPal services.” Absent any further explanation beyond the desire to limit “potential risk exposure,” the site was informed that the nearly $10,000 sitting in its account would be effectively confiscated for “up to 180 days,” after which point, “if applicable, we’ll email you with information on how to withdraw any remaining money.”

The seizure came at a particularly damaging time for the reader-funded site, which had just begun a spring fundraising drive. Contacted by CN employees, a PayPal customer service representative confirmed on Sunday that no specific reason had been given by the “back office” for “permanently limiting” the account other than the aforementioned “potential risk.”

“I don’t see any existing case” of a complaint having been filed by “any agency, government or private, or any individual,” they told CN, promising to ask PayPal’s back office to explain its behavior to the website.

More ominously, the PayPal representative informed CN that “if there was a violation,” it was “possible” the $9,348.14 balance in its account would be kept by PayPal as “damages.” According to PayPal’s own documentation, violations include providing “false, inaccurate or misleading information” to PayPal, its customers, or “third parties.”

In a blog post discussing the suspension, CN editor-in-chief Joe Lauria suggested the site had been targeted due to its coverage of the conflict in Ukraine, noting that MintPress News – another well-known alt-media website with similar political views regarding the US and NATO’s foreign adventures – had its own account frozen by PayPal last week. PayPal’s definition of “violations,” Lauria implied, could easily be stretched to include the Orwellian crime du jour of “fake news,” an especially egregious offense during wartime.

Last week, former RT America correspondent Caleb Maupin also had his PayPal account frozen without warning or explanation, as did MintPress employees Alan MacLeod and Mnar Adley. Many on social media have speculated that the payment processor is deliberately targeting those with dissident views on the conflict in Ukraine and US foreign policy in general – “thoughtcrimes” hundreds of other prominent commentators have been deplatformed for in the past.

Consortium News was founded in 1995 by the late journalist Robert Parry, whose claims to fame included exposing the Iran-Contra scandal, in opposition to what the site’s own biography describes as “a crisis building in the US news media.”

Skewering the “pattern of groupthink on issue after issue, often ignoring important factual information because it didn’t fit with what all the Important People knew to be true.”

May 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | 2 Comments

‘They’re coming to kill us’: Canada’s Rebel News CANCELED by PayPal without notice

RT | May 6, 2021

Rebel News co-founder Ezra Levant announced that payment processor PayPal has canceled their account without an explanation. The Canadian outlet has been critical of the Covid-19 lockdowns and the government of PM Justin Trudeau.

“Look, this isn’t a mistake. It’s a cancel culture attack on the largest independent news agency in Canada. It’s censorship,” Levant announced on Thursday, in a fundraising appeal for legal fees to sue PayPal.

“They’re finally coming to kill us,” the Rebel News account tweeted.

According to Levant, PayPal sent a “form letter” by email last Friday after business hours, informing the outlet that their account – which processed over 150,000 transactions for 8 million Canadian dollars over the past six years – was canceled. The email had no signature, contact information, explanation or way to appeal, Levant said.

“We’re a big client. But with no notice at all, they just breached the contract. They ambushed us,” he wrote. Levant maintains Rebel News never breached PayPal’s terms of service, and that the company has simply ignored multiple letters from his lawyers.

Levant argues this is a coordinated effort, pointing to the fact that Google-owned YouTube handed Rebel News a week-long suspension before PayPal made its move. Moreover, in addition to the Rebel News account, PayPal shuttered Levant’s personal account, as well as that of the For Canada nonprofit, used to fundraise for charity projects.

“That’s why I don’t think this is a mistake. They’re trying to destroy us. And they don’t have the courage to even tell us to our face,” said Levant, who co-founded the outlet in 2015.

While identifying as conservative, Rebel News has been critical of both the Liberal Trudeau government and the conservative provincial leaders such as Jason Kenney in Alberta and Francois Legault in Quebec.

Levant even speculated that PayPal’s action may have been related to the recent Rebel News revelation that Trudeau had funded the Anti-Hate Network – an offshoot of the US-based SPLC – to “lodge malicious complaints against Trudeau’s enemies.”

He says Rebel News has lost about a million dollars as a result of the PayPal and YouTube actions, and wants to raise $150,000 to sue.

While PayPal is yet to comment on the matter, denial of service by banks and payment processors has been a popular way of shutting down unpopular outlets and online platforms over the past several years. Back in March, Gab CEO Andrew Torba revealed that several banks have refused to do business with his company citing bad coverage in the corporate press, urging like-minded Americans to “cancel them all before they cancel us.”

May 6, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 1 Comment

Amazing Polly on the Purge – Technological Harassment

Have the wrong opinion? You will be burned to the ground. That’s what is happening to an increasing number of people – our ability to buy & sell, contact our people, use the bank, use the phone, etc is not only under threat but absolutely under their tyrannical control. I talk about the insane level of technological harassment I and other have been subjected to in the past week. I must say once again that we should NOT BE AFRAID. This was expected. We fight on!

My web page has my PO Box address here: https://www.amazingpolly.net/contact.html – Thank you to everyone who has sent support, letters & prayers. God bless you all!

References:

Dollar Vigilante: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/DkNYbFJKDPpX/

HighImpactFlix: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/msOrGRqxxZ7S/

SGTReport: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/nLPcg68RnP97/

RoyPotter: https://www.youtube.com/user/roypotterqa

Richie From Boston: https://watch.richiefromboston.tv/webtv-v3/

October 20, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | 2 Comments

gab.com & the Great Purge on the Horizon

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 30, 2018

gab.com is an alternative social network, set up and launched in 2016. It’s founder, Andrew Torba, stated he wanted to create a home for free speech, and counter what he perceived as “liberal bias” on other platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook.

Two days ago, their website was taken down. This was in response to being blocked by PayPal, and then having their server space taken away by their hosting service. gab’s founder posted this statement on their stripped-down website.

Why did this happen?

Because Robert Bowers, the alleged gunman at the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, had a gab account and posted some things about “the jews” on it.

Is it right, or sensible to punish a platform for the (alleged) actions of ONE user out of 100,000s? And is that really what’s going on?

Robert Bowers also had a Twitter account. And a Facebook page. Neither of these platforms has faced punishment, or censure, from any quarter.

Cesar Sayoc – the alleged MAGABomber – also had a twitter account and allegedly sent threatening messages to some public figures on it. Again, Twitter has not been blocked by PayPal.

In fact, Twitter and Facebook – though occasionally criticised for “not doing enough to combat hate”, have never been blocked, or threatened in any way. Even though Twitter hosted countless pro-ISIS accounts, regularly cited in the media.

So clearly, it can be reasoned, PayPal et al are not only responding to the alleged statements of Robert Bowers. There is a deeper agenda at work.

In fact, this isn’t the first time larger internet companies have tried to stymie gab’s existence. When they were first launched, in 2016, Apple denied them a place in their app store because they allegedly allowed pornography to be posted. When gab installed a filter to block people posting pornography, Apple again denied them access to the app store, this time for breaching their “hate speech” regulations. Google Play did the same in 2017 (reminder – Google allowed ISIS to release their own app on their marketplace).

Early this year a cross-university study conducted on gab (and other “alt-right” sites) found that gab.com used “free speech as shield to protect their “alt-right” views”. (I’m not sure what, if anything, that sentence really means. Surely free speech is a shield protecting all speech? Isn’t that the point?)

In April this year VICE magazine ran an article headlined “Gab Is the Alt-Right Social Network Racists Are Moving to”. It was resoundingly negative about the site, painting it as nothing but a home for racism and “conspiracy theorists”, despite the owner’s protestations that gab is all about free speech, and that anyone is free to join.

Logically, the emergence of networks like gab was inevitable. The internet has always been that way, you shut down one hallway and four more are forced open. Look at Piratebay, notionally banned, yet available through a million different proxies that spring up faster than governments can shut them down.

Social media has undergone unprecedented purges this year. Alex Jones was banned across virtually every mainstream platform. Hundreds of Facebook pages and Twitter accounts were shut down on spurious grounds – allegations of being “Kremlin backed” or “Iran bots”fly around, without any supporting evidence ever being released to the public. This summer, Twitter blocked millions of “fake accounts” (we covered that here).

These actions aren’t independent, either. Alex Jones was banned from multiple platforms, all within 24 hours. Just earlier this month, Facebook unpublished over 800 pages, whilst twitter blocked the accounts of the same pages… all on the same day. Clearly, the companies are either coordinating with each other (possibly in breach of anti-trust laws), or are receiving directions from the same source – almost certainly the government.

In that climate, new platforms were always going to emerge. It’s the classic “Well then I’m gonna build my own theme park, with blackjack and hookers” situation.

YouTube is increasingly corporate, controlled and fake. Demonetising user videos and adding more and more advertisements… so dtube and bitchute open. Twitter censors your free-speech, so we’ll start up a platform where you can say what you want.

Twitter and Facebook both saw their stock-prices tumble as a result of their respective “purges”. So, is the anti-gab movement simply a case of mega-corporations protecting their monopoly by shutting down a budding rival? Is this all just about control of the market and money?

Unfortunately, it seems not. Like the vast majority of media roll-outs, it seems this is a convergence of interests – financial on the one hand, and political on the other.

The push to ban the “alt-right” – or, the even broader term – “hate speech” has been on-going for several years now. It will inevitably pick up in the wake of the events of this week.

Within hours, predictable voices were discussing the “necessary limitations on free speech”:

Today, CNN ran this piece: “Big Tech made the social media mess. It has to fix it”.

Paul Mason, writing in the New Statesman, argued that YouTube needs to censor all the “alt-right” on their platform.

It’s a two-step process – having first established the need to “limit” hate speech, we can then move on to defining what “hate speech” really means.

They’ve started on that already. Criticising George Soros is “anti-semitic” now. As is the term “neocons”:

What else will be deemed hate speech? What does “hate speech” really mean? The simple answer to that is: Whatever they want it to mean.

It seems like there’s a purge coming, you can feel it in the wind. A purge motivated by the greed of multinational companies wielding power that rivals nations, and fuelled by the fascistic need of the “powers-that-shouldn’t-be” to limit and control our existence…just because they can.

It is both authoritarian power grab, and a manifestation of corporate greed. It’s amazing how often those two things come together.

Kit Knightly is co-editor of OffGuardian. The Guardian banned him from commenting. Twice. He used to write for fun, but now he’s forced to out of a near-permanent sense of outrage.

October 30, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 1 Comment

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