FIRE COMES OUT AGAINST (NOT SO) SOFT CENSORSHIP BY PAYMENT PROCESSORS. “When payment processing services act as political hall monitors or moral arbiters deciding what speech and viewpoints are out of bounds, they present a grave threat to free expression.”

I can tell you, from working there for 19 years (I was executive director, now I’m a Senior Fellow after moving to private practice), FIRE does not take positions like this lightly. We care deeply about private organizations’ right to expression, or we wouldn’t be free speech advocates. But the danger presented by the concerted efforts to choke off dissent in this nation, through means both private and public, is hard to overstate. When I started at FIRE in 2003, the only place Americans were likely to experience censorship was a college campus, and the victims were justifiably outraged about it. Thanks to Big Tech thought policing, hundreds of thousands (maybe millions?) of victims each year are added to that total. Those who think this can continue forever are fools who will drive us this country off a cliff if they don’t stop ASAP.