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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

#151

Post by jasonlotito »

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…

> At which point this is not censorship when companies equivalent to public infra

But they aren't public infrastructure. Twitter isn't. Cloudflare isn't. CC companies aren't.

They are private companies, and as as these people were fine with private companies denying services to left-leaning individuals in the past, they don't have much of a leg to stand on now that they are on the receiving end of it.

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

#152

Post by umvi »

root_axis wrote: post #143
umvi wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking more Comcast and other ISPs. I could easily see Twitter mobs pressuring Comcast to knock a self-hosted server offline if the server is hosting something the Twitter mob doesn't like.

Self-hosted servers are already against Comcast TOS, they tolerate them for casual use but any significant traffic is going to result in a service interruption.

How does one self host their own online speech then? Whatever your answer is, that thing should not be controlled by a private company.

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

#153

Post by rndgermandude »

oarsinsync wrote: post #140
rndgermandude wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, the CEO decided to terminate their account because he didn't like them. The bit about "endorsement" was just a rationalization after the fact.

>“Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet,” Prince wrote in an internal memo to employees obtained by Gizmodo and published on Wednesday. “No one should have that power.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/17/cloudflare-ceo-says-removing...

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

#154

Post by lawnchair_larry »

pdkl95 wrote: post #141
microcolonel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're referring to the sentence containing “several members have been affiliated with white supremacy”, it kinda doesn't jive with the fact that their highest leadership position is filled by an afro-cuban man, and the fact that there is no official or de-facto-official Proud Boys public communication of anything regarding white supremacy other than condemnation of it, nor any official or sanctioned actions taken…

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou... > There are three degrees of membership within the Proud Boys, and to become a first degree in the “pro-West fraternal organization” a prospective member simply has to declare “I am a western chauvinist , and I refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.” The Proud Boys describe themselves as a "Western chauvinist". White supremacists have used "w…

They are not white supremacists no matter what the overtly biased SPLC says. Many of them are not even white, and their chairman is black. Trying to push this smear is just silly at this point. The media have taken to calling all anti-BLM or anti-antifa counter protesters “white supremacists” and it’s quite ridiculous.

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

#156

Post by sascha_sl »

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…

Except that is explicitly not the argument of those that actually want these folks deplatformed, but those that fear their own speech will somehow be in danger and want to solve every issue in existence with technology.

The "it could happen to you argument" is really tiring. Gab is abusing your idealism. If you spent any amount of time on Gab you'd know it was a deeply right wing bubble full of hate, with a lot of harassment coordination happening. I say has because it has gone a bit out of fashion and these people moved on to Parlor now. This is not merely a place where people have opinions (that someone thinks are bad). That exists on YouTube. If the bar really was "the consensus thinks you're wrong, filled with bias and not interested in productive exchange", Stephen Crowder, Dennis Prager and Tim Pool would not be on YouTube. James Damore would not have been on every conservative program in existence. Society has drawn a line, and you can argue if it's too strict or leniant, but to say we could never draw one without the possibility of false positives is defeatist idealism.

Sites like Gab or, let me dare mention their name, Kiwi Farms, are different. They facilitate material harm in a very tangible clear-cut way. They are very definitely beyond the point where tolerance does not actively work to destroy itself.

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

#157

Post by olefoo »

kypro wrote: post #104
some_furry wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [They] did the same for Antifa though, so at least they are somewhat consistent. I don't think this is a coherent statement. Antifa isn't an organization. The Proud Boys definitely is. If you're not familiar with the Proud Boys, this is a good introductory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZMWQDvZQZs

> Antifa isn't an organization. They have spokes people, a uniform, unified political beliefs, and meet through organised events. I suspect the only reason they claim not to be an organisation is because they don't want to be label a terror organisation. Either way, how they choose to organise should be completely irrelevant here. If Antifa decided they were an organisation tomorrow and The Proud Boys put out a state…

Your ideological sophistication is questionable. If you've ever spent time in left discourse you'd know that leftists argue about everything. And it's not just leftists who hate fascists. It's pretty much anybody with a basic understanding of the history of the last century.

Fascism wants to start up the murder machine; and they'll tell you that it's to "purify" the nation and they'll try to present it in such a way that you think it's only "bad, dirty, disgusting" people who will be fed into it. But in the end the murder-machine will be turned against anyone and everyone until it is stopped.

The scenarios that apply to this country look less like Europe in the 1930's and more like Syria with a side of Rwanda.

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

#158

Post by gwright »

ashtonkem wrote: post #79
dleslie wrote: post #25

To be clear: the domain registrar has been cut off. I doubt that Paypal is going to be consistent about this; _I suspect that_ illegal content and hate sites can be found in the registries of many major registrars. Still, it's a concerning development for anyone who may be using the same registration service as a future target. Edit: I missed that they are alleged to be laundering money.

They got cut off because they’re suspected to be laundering money, and couldn’t fill out AML forms, not because they host hate speech.

I think there is room to talk about what is an appropriate due process and/or orderly shutdown process for someone operating internet infrastructure such as a payment processor, ISP, registrar, etc.

Perhaps the registrar should have been taken over by some sort of court-appointed receivership, for example? The difficulty here is that there has been no judicial process, just PayPal making a corporate decision based on their contract.

I'm not saying that Paypal wasn't justified, just wondering if there might be a way to minimize collateral damage.

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

#159

Post by glasss »

djsumdog wrote: post #133
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.

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

This is what I'm most concerned about.

If someone wants to get an independent registrar or other piece of infrastructure set up in the future, they shouldn't be associated with, or have to deal with the stigma of others that have done similar things just to end up conducting illegal activities. It will eventually lead people to believe that anyone who wants to break the mold will eventually do illegal things, so they might as well just not allow that to begin with.

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

#160

Post by jasonvorhe »

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…

So you're basically in the same space as porn (not that I'm comparing porn to right wing activists!): People DDoS you, payment providers don't want to do business with you, social media companies only accept you if you adhere to their strict rules (no nipples, no close ups of your intimate parts, nothing explicit) - where is the outrage regarding the people who had to deal with this since the birth of the mainstream internet?
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