PAYPAL’S DYSTOPIAN FINANCIAL CENSORSHIP SCHEME BACKFIRES:
However, concerned customers shouldn’t assume that everything is fine now.
As it turns out, PayPal has in place another dystopian financial censorship policy that enacts similar fines for those it deems bigots or hatemongers. Law professor Eugene Volokh exposed the PayPal policy, which again authorizes $2,500 fines (taken directly out of your bank account) for “activities that … relate to … the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory” in the “sole discretion” of, yup, PayPal.
This is, of course, entirely subjective. Anyone with mildly right-of-center viewpoints on topics ranging from affirmative action to climate change to religious liberty to abortion has, at one point or another, faced shrieks of “bigot!” from some progressive opponents. A company setting itself up to rob users of thousands of dollars for subjectively perceived speech crimes is not just dystopian, but also in grotesque violation of its users’ financial privacy and the trust that has been placed in the company by millions of hard-working people.
That said, we don’t need to run to the government for a solution here.
We already saw how widespread consumer backlash led PayPal to reverse its first policy. So we simply need to keep the pressure on and demand the company end its other Orwellian infringements. And if it won’t, then we should all cancel our PayPal accounts and migrate to other platforms.
This kind of newfangled corporate financial censorship represents a grave threat to a free and open society. We must stop it here before this kind of overreach spreads further throughout our digital lives.