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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

#131

Post by wernercd »

ceejayoz wrote: post #76
kypro wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing services to African Americans and homosexuals would have been a PR disaster historically. You shouldn't be denied access to critical services like this because of unpopular political beliefs. Honestly, it's worrying I even have to say this. It's utterly nuts people here are defending this.

You can't stop being African American, and it's generally accepted that homosexuality is the same. You can stop being a Proud Boy. If you look at what are deemed by law to be "protected classes", they are generally things that can't be readily changed - age, gender, disability, race.

And next year, when the political winds change... businesses can stop working with you because insert random reason here.

Nice standard of intolerance we are building here.

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

#132

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

criddell wrote: post #88
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The history of explosive growth in tech platforms should make us very cautious about assuming small economies will stay small. It's been barely a decade since Facebook and Twitter were small platforms that didn't matter.

A decade ago Facebook and Twitter were small in a nascent industry.

That's how we see it in retrospect, but at the time it wasn't obvious that the industry was nascent. Many people saw them as strong competitors to Myspace and Friendster rather than anything fundamentally new; even once they got clearly past Myspace, it was quite common to hear people saying that the global demand for social media is probably saturated as they continued to grow.

(And of course, it wasn't obvious that Myspace was a nascent industry either when they launched in 2003!)

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

#133

Post by djsumdog »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #13

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 thin…

It's kinda shitty if Epik knows they are participating in questionable business practices, can't answer basic questions needed for SEC, and then turn around and try to spit this out as the whole thing being political.

This hurts people who want to run independent alternative platforms in the long term.

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

#134

Post by renewiltord »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #111
renewiltord wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And neither does America. This man was arrested for calling his mayor corrupt: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/internet-speech/new-ha... To be honest, I know where most people stand on free speech when I see them saying that we shouldn't allow anyone to call for anyone else to be fired. I think freedom of speech is so important that I will defend to the death your right to ask for me to be fired.

> The police ultimately dropped the charges — after the ACLU of New Hampshire spoke out against Frese’s prosecution. https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/internet-speech/new-ha... nobody was prosecuted in that story. The police did abuse their power.

Well, no one was prosecuted in PayPal's termination of Epik's account either so I suppose we're good here then.

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

#135

Post by Jtsummers »

golemotron wrote: post #129
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.

It happens a lot today. Advertising targets lifestyle cohorts, and political orientation is part of that. if you polled Uber and Lyft users you'd find that they have very different views of the world. Same with McDonalds and Chick-Fil-A. Last year, I was on an American Airlines flight and it was notable that they played up patriotism in a way that Delta doesn't.

I haven't flown on American in ages. How do they play up patriotism? Like, if a soldier boards they announce it kind of stuff? Because I've seen that on Delta too.

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

#136

Post by mainstreem »

ceejayoz wrote: post #32
toomuchtodo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is speech, so says the supreme court (Citizens United). Impeding the transfer of fiat (infra which should be a utility) is a violation of constitutional rights (arguably) if you're not breaking the law. Even if I disagree with the speech (I do! Vehemently!), rights must be inalienable. Maybe this should be patched in Section 230 legislation versus 18 USC § 1960, would have to read more statute to provide a prop…

SCOTUS has also ruled companies and people have a right to free association , with the exception of discrimination based on a protected class. Proud Boys are not a protected class.

They came for the Proud Boys, but I thought they were a fascist group because I believe whatever the trustworthy media says, so I said nothing.

Then the trustworthy media said I was a fascist, and they came for me, and no one believed I wasn't a fascist.

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

#137

Post by kypro »

ceejayoz wrote: post #76
kypro wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing services to African Americans and homosexuals would have been a PR disaster historically. You shouldn't be denied access to critical services like this because of unpopular political beliefs. Honestly, it's worrying I even have to say this. It's utterly nuts people here are defending this.

You can't stop being African American, and it's generally accepted that homosexuality is the same. You can stop being a Proud Boy. If you look at what are deemed by law to be "protected classes", they are generally things that can't be readily changed - age, gender, disability, race.

How does one change their political believes? I'd argue that some of my political beliefs are as firm and unchangeable as my sexual preferences.

But to play along with your logic here, what if someone was a member of a feminist organisation? Do you believe it would be acceptable for a company to refuse to do business with people who are members of feminist organisations?

And if your argument is that it's possible to pretend not to be a feminist, can the same not also be said for someones sexual orientation?

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

#138

Post by AnthonyMouse »

tobylane wrote: post #27
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.

Without Visa, Mastercard or Paypal on the other side how can it survive? Cryptocurrencies as the current niche are hanging on, I suspect for as long as VMP permit them (ie buying bitcoin with a credit card). Everyone else, even Apple, go through them.

It's really more of a bootstrapping issue than anything. You need to accept credit cards because that's what your customers expect to pay using.

If your customers start to expect to pay using some cryptocurrency, what do you need credit cards for?

First you have to reach a critical mass for the alternative payment system, but the more legitimate businesses that PayPal boots to the other side of the wall, the more mass there is on the other side of the wall.

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

#140

Post by oarsinsync »

rndgermandude wrote: post #73
nojito wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are they? Some may be, such as proud boys and dailystormer may be afoul of some (vague) hate speech clauses. Others may not be. paypal and CC companies also shut down donations to wikileaks long ago (long before Trump was a thing). And even shut down donations to other foundations, such as the Wau Holland Stiftung of the Chaos Computer Club[0], that collected donations in part for wikileaks. My first real memory of p…

> I also find it fascinating e.g. that cloudflare still protects botters (aka outright declared criminals) and people selling child porn[3] (aka the worst of common criminals), but dailystormer, as vile as they are, are somehow too much.

The publicly stated motivations behind terminating dailystormer are that dailystormer allegedly suggested that Cloudflare supported them. The content wasn’t the issue, the suggested endorsement was:

https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

EDIT: this doesn’t gel with my memory of the events at the time, which were that the site got terminated because the CEO or CTO was in a bad mood, mind. It may be some post-hoc rationalisation to make it more palatable and give them cover against the things you’re saying. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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