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Gab.com banned from PayPal

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Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#51

Post by Meekro »

Asparagirl wrote: post #26

Good. Now for Stripe. I already called their customer support this morning and told them I'd pull my organization's account unless they dropped Gab. I'm sure I'm not the only customer who has. They enable payments processing for Gab, which means that they also profit from Gab. They make money off the alt-right. They choose to make money off the alt-right. You want protests in front of your office, Stripe, raising hel…

I notice your organization (reclaimtherecords.org from your profile) uses Cloudflare, which also serves Gab. Are you going to threaten to leave them, too?

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#52

Post by tptacek »

bgilroy26 wrote: post #35
ben_jones wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As bad is voat is I've seen that aspect of humanity on Youtube, Facebook, the comment section of most major news sites, the live chat of twitch, etc.

Historically, voat and gab were set up because its users disapproved of the moderation on reddit and twitter. That differentiates the cultures on voat and gab from their predecessors.

That is an extraordinarily charitable way to describe the genesis of Gab, which actually has roots in a YC batch (that its founder, Andrew Torba, was kicked out of).

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#53

Post by VectorLock »

Asparagirl wrote: post #26

Good. Now for Stripe. I already called their customer support this morning and told them I'd pull my organization's account unless they dropped Gab. I'm sure I'm not the only customer who has. They enable payments processing for Gab, which means that they also profit from Gab. They make money off the alt-right. They choose to make money off the alt-right. You want protests in front of your office, Stripe, raising hel…

As much as people seem to hate PayPal this event might actually improve people's view of PayPal.

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#54

Post by threeseed »

dev_dull wrote: post #40
yzmtf2008 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t conflate this story with “banned for no reason”. There are plenty of reasons to ban Gab.

Are they doing anything illegal?

In most countries, yes.

But illegality is not the issue here. People simply have a right not to be associated with hate.

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#57

Post by pavlov »

dgzl wrote: post #16

Was Gab actively supporting the hateful groups more than just giving them a speech platform? Because if not, this is truly terrifying. It seems like the "left" (whatever that means), with waves of ignorant support, is turning into the monster it thinks it's fighting against.

It’s easy to say everyone has the right to a platform, but an overwhelming majority agrees that this shouldn’t apply to groups like pedophiles and Islamic State. The antisemitic alt-right is growing more violent. When do they cross the line, if you feel it hasn’t been crossed yet?

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#58

Post by Quanttek »

dgzl wrote: post #16

Was Gab actively supporting the hateful groups more than just giving them a speech platform? Because if not, this is truly terrifying. It seems like the "left" (whatever that means), with waves of ignorant support, is turning into the monster it thinks it's fighting against.

PayPal is a profit-oriented company, not the "left" - whatever that boogeyman means. A company that doesn't want to support one of the most vitriolic, hateful platforms on the internet. Speech has consequences and can turn violent and this platform welcomed these people and this hate speech (by explicitly catering to those that got banned from other services etc).

Relevant: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-05/uok-rsp05031...

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#59

Post by Asparagirl »

Meekro wrote: post #51
Asparagirl wrote: post #26

Good. Now for Stripe. I already called their customer support this morning and told them I'd pull my organization's account unless they dropped Gab. I'm sure I'm not the only customer who has. They enable payments processing for Gab, which means that they also profit from Gab. They make money off the alt-right. They choose to make money off the alt-right. You want protests in front of your office, Stripe, raising hel…

I notice your organization (reclaimtherecords.org from your profile) uses Cloudflare, which also serves Gab. Are you going to threaten to leave them, too?

Hmmm, that's a good point. But we don't pay Cloudflare, we're on their free plan, so you could say we're actually a drain on their system rather than a customer. In contrast, we pay Stripe quite a bit, so threatening to leave them actually hits them in their wallet.

I signed us up for a Braintree account today as soon as I heard the PayPal news (PayPal now owns Braintree). We can take our business elsewhere -- and so can lots of other organizations and companies.

Re: Gab.com banned from PayPal

#60

Post by tptacek »

jsheard wrote: post #24
rurounijones wrote: post #11

Can someone provide background context for gab.com?

It's ostensibly the "free speech" version of Twitter, in practice it mostly caters to the far-right. The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter was a user: https://archive.fo/k63LE His profile has now been nuked by Gab, but only to save face after the shooting. They would usually pride themselves in not removing that kind of content.

It's worth noting that in its heyday --- usage on Gab appears to have plummeted, at least measured by the front page, and seems to be dominated today by bots --- the content on that page was absolutely par for the course for the front page of the site. There was even a House candidate, Paul Nehlen, who campaigned using almost identical anti-Semitic rhetoric on Gab.

You wouldn't want to leave anyone the impression that this kind of stuff was somehow buried on individual user pages on Gab. Rather, it is the raison d'etre for the whole site.

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