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PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

mashable.com

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Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#11

Post by nojito »

patrickaljord wrote: post #8
jasonvorhe wrote: post #3

This is good news, but I suspect the "censorship cancel culture" crowd will be chiming in soon.

Well, I mean, when they were banned from twitter, people said "build your own twitter", when they built gab and got banned from credit cards processors they said "build your own financial system", when they got banned from cloudflare they were told "build your own internet backbone" etc... At which point this is not censorship when companies equivalent to public infra with big public contracts and ties to the governm…

These sites aren’t being banned for their views but their blatant disregard for the terms of services for providers.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#12

Post by umvi »

Seems like PayPal had already cut off funding for Proud Boys over a year ago? The did the same for Antifa though, so at least they are somewhat consistent.

This particular article seems less about Proud Boys and more about Epik using an "alternative currency" called "Masterbucks"...

> The right wing has long accused tech companies of anti-conservative bias. Experts say the claims are unfounded.

It's an interesting situation. Facebook particularly I would say has an overwhelming conservative bias. At least, I saw an article the other day on how the top X trending posts on Facebook are always dominated by pro-conservative pieces. However, I've also seen a ton of anti-conservative partisan fact-checking on Facebook (i.e. it's obvious the factchecker was doing everything possible to label an unfavorable article as "false" or "partly false" on a small technicality). So in my opinion, the situation is that (in the case of Facebook), the userbase and content is right-leaning, while the fact-checkers/employees are left leaning and are trying to combat their own userbase.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#13

Post by mcintyre1994 »

From the article:

> According to one letter, penned by Epik’s SVP of strategy and communications, Robert Davis, PayPal inquired about offshore accounts, money transmission licenses, and "other queries related to cross‐border activities and law enforcement."

> “[The questions] were absolutely absurd, and well outside of any knowledge or experience we have as a domain registrar,” said Davis.

These sound to me like things PayPal very obviously should be asking of anyone using them to run a cryptocurrency.

Interesting that they've taken down the masterbucks page now linked in the article and with the archived note about tax advantages, and moved it to masterbucks.com which their FAQ claims they control: https://www.epik.com/support/knowledgebase/using-masterbucks...

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#15

Post by gruez »

ravenstine wrote: post #7

In the coming years, we may see the rise of separate economies based on political divide. I think this is where we are heading, and this will counterpart the world splitting the internet into nationally divided fragments.

>and this will counterpart the world splitting the internet into nationally divided fragments.

Perhaps, but how is this related to this story? Both epik and paypal are located in the US. If anything this points towards the internet being divided across partisan lines.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#16

Post by [deleted] »

umvi wrote: post #12

Seems like PayPal had already cut off funding for Proud Boys over a year ago? The did the same for Antifa though, so at least they are somewhat consistent. This particular article seems less about Proud Boys and more about Epik using an "alternative currency" called "Masterbucks"... > The right wing has long accused tech companies of anti-conservative bias. Experts say the claims are unfounded. It's an interesting si…

[deleted]

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#17

Post by ceejayoz »

patrickaljord wrote: post #8
jasonvorhe wrote: post #3

This is good news, but I suspect the "censorship cancel culture" crowd will be chiming in soon.

Well, I mean, when they were banned from twitter, people said "build your own twitter", when they built gab and got banned from credit cards processors they said "build your own financial system", when they got banned from cloudflare they were told "build your own internet backbone" etc... At which point this is not censorship when companies equivalent to public infra with big public contracts and ties to the governm…

Look, if you get a reputation for entering businesses and shitting on the floor, you'll find yourself banned from all of them eventually.

The same is true for online businesses.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#18

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

patrickaljord wrote: post #8
jasonvorhe wrote: post #3

This is good news, but I suspect the "censorship cancel culture" crowd will be chiming in soon.

Well, I mean, when they were banned from twitter, people said "build your own twitter", when they built gab and got banned from credit cards processors they said "build your own financial system", when they got banned from cloudflare they were told "build your own internet backbone" etc... At which point this is not censorship when companies equivalent to public infra with big public contracts and ties to the governm…

"ties to the government?" Even if that were more than vague and nebulous, it's still not "actually the government." Private companies terminating accounts of their own volition is not censorship.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#20

Post by edoceo »

gruez wrote: post #15
ravenstine wrote: post #7

In the coming years, we may see the rise of separate economies based on political divide. I think this is where we are heading, and this will counterpart the world splitting the internet into nationally divided fragments.

>and this will counterpart the world splitting the internet into nationally divided fragments. Perhaps, but how is this related to this story? Both epik and paypal are located in the US. If anything this points towards the internet being divided across partisan lines.

"political divide" from the first sentence.
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