PayPal, the online service that allows you to send and receive payments using credit cards, bank accounts, and a lot more, has a dark side. You would think that an online service that acts as a financial technology company wouldn’t get itself into cancel culture and censorship roles, but the company is known to deplatform organizations and individual people over their political views, and that makes it a dangerous company to do business with if you are one of the targets of the woke progressive Democratic Party that calls the shots on all social media platforms to censor free speech they don’t like. Left-wing fascists have always done this through time and I don’t know what made people think that technology would wipe that out.
PayPal recently announced a new policy that allows the company to sanction its users who espouse so-called “misinformation” or present risks to user “wellbeing” with fines that could reach up to $2,500 per offense.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN OUR NEWSLETTERThe problem with this kind of evil is that the community at large is not the arbiter of what determines “misinformation.” That role was self-employed by the woke supremacy of the last decade. It is the supremacy that makes that determination of truth and not facts or truth itself.
For example, you could speak about something that is perfectly legit, as most topics are in a democracy with a First Amendment protection for free speech, and yet have your speech labeled as misinformation even though at the time you made your argument, you believed it was truthful information. Even if you didn’t, you have the right to speak freely on 99 44/100% of the things you say. That’s how a democracy works, even when it’s run inside a constitutional republic with free speech guarantees. In most cases these days, if you present a truthful argument and the community at large agrees with your statements, the woke supremacy could still declare your words as misinformation. Being silenced this is one of the most unamerican things a person can experience.
And that’s why it came as such a shock to me when I read that PayPal ramped up its fascist element and went full-blown dictator over free speech.
The problem with Marxist executives of companies in a capitalist society is that they don’t care about their responsibility to their shareholders and to the community at large. They run their companies as ideologues with no consideration to their clients, you the customer.
VISIT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNELYou participate with these companies that ultimately result in their earning profits. You did that for them. You gave them your money either through service fees or by earning it in the float. And then to have the company that you helped earn profits, even in the smallest of ways, turn on you and tell you that you do not have the right to free speech, which has absolutely nothing to do with your reason for using the services of the company is just plain evil.
PayPal put out an “Acceptable Use” document HERE. Don’t go looking for it because the document is now blank.
Among the changes that were initially listed, were prohibitions on “the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials” that “promote misinformation” or “present a risk to user safety or wellbeing.” Users are also barred from “the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory.”
Apparently, the backlash was strong and swift to this fascist declaration, as PayPal has backed off its once published policy.
“An AUP notice recently went out in error that included incorrect information. PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy. Our teams are working to correct our policy pages. We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused,” a spokesperson said to National Review in a written statement.
From Yahoo! News:
The course reversal comes after the policy changes had started to attract media scrutiny as well as criticism on Twitter. Former PayPal president David Marcus even blasted the company over the implication that it could seize customers’ money for finding their views objectionable.
“It’s hard for me to openly criticize a company I used to love and gave so much to. But @PayPal’s new AUP goes against everything I believe in,” the cryptocurrency entrepreneur said Saturday. “A private company now gets to decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with. Insanity.”
Tech titan Elon Musk [a founder of PayPal] replied, “Agreed,” in a comment that got thousands of likes.
Agreed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 8, 2022
One user posted a screenshot of her explanation as to why she was closing her PayPal account:
PayPal’s current acceptable use policy doesn’t mention any of these things.
If you broke their rules against so-called misinformation and hate speech, it “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,” the company had originally ordered. In a user agreement, account holders accept and attest that the penalty is “presently a reasonable minimum estimate of PayPal’s actual damages” due to the expense the firm incurs by accounting for the violations as well as damage to its reputation.
When PayPal declared that additions to their acceptable use policy went out by mistake, trust me, it was no mistake. The woke tyrants who now run PayPal knew perfectly well what they were doing. They just didn’t think they would get such a backlash from it. For the amount of people who rejected their proposed new policy, it was enough for even the Marxists among the executives at PayPal to walk it back.
PayPal is a great service and it would do well for them to stay out of the Marxist, fascist silencing the opposition game.
