Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mashable.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 243 posts

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

#171

Post by teclordphrack2 »

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…

The reason they are organized is such a dis-organized manner is b/c of the fbi and other state and federal agencys that have historically targeted the left. Can't kill or imprison a groups leaders if it has 100's of heads.

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

#172

Post by nemothekid »

gwright wrote: post #158
ashtonkem wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When it comes to potentially laundering money, the SEC doesn't give you a lot fo time for "orderly shutdown process". You should have gotten your documents in order before the SEC starts knocking on your door.

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

#173

Post by commandlinefan »

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…

> when they built gab and got banned from credit cards processors they said "build your own financial system"

As a free speech absolutist, I'm always a little optimistic when I see this sort of thing happen, because it always has the opposite effect than its intent: the censors expect that the things they don't like to disappear completely as if they had never existed, but what ends up happening is that censorship drives further decentralization, which is even harder to censor. This event exposed another single point of failure - its up to the infrastructure to fix that.

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

#174

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

olefoo wrote: post #157
kypro wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The problem with modern Antifa is that the definition of "fascist" is becoming so loose and so unhinged from historical context that it is meaningless.

For example, according to many activists claiming to be associated with Antifa, if one believes that trans-rights matters are not a major priority – compared, say, to class issues – that makes one a fascist. Think of the extreme leftists of May 1968, who were fighting against what they saw as insufficiently punished or even resurgent fascism. Since advocating for sexual minorities was not a central part of their struggle (even feminism or gay men’s issues were at the margins), we are supposed to assume that those anti-fascists were themselves fascist. That’s absurd.

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

#175

Post by ufmace »

ashtonkem wrote: post #105
gedy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that now, but if the political winds change in future and progressive ideals and orgs are then labeled "hate speech", promoting violence, I suspect there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

PayPal isn’t cutting them off because of who they host, they’re cutting them off because they’re selling a cryptocurrency and couldn’t meet AML regulations. It’s very frustrating how many people here are falling into the trap of fighting out this culture war issue when it doesn’t seem to be supported by the facts in the article.

This. I wonder if dang can change the title to be less misleading?

I was already suspicious why a hosting company needs a relationship with Paypal.

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

#176

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ashtonkem wrote: post #75
jasonvorhe wrote: post #3

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

And the fact that this appears to be about potential money laundering will of course be ignored.

Money laundering is a sham. It's like saying that it's really about potential resisting arrest.

The premise of money laundering is that you're a criminal engaged in some kind of profitable criminal enterprise and it should be illegal for you to hide the source of your ill-gotten gains. But nothing about the laws against money laundering require them to apply only to someone engaged in underlying criminal activity, so people who are doing nothing wrong regularly end up ensnared in them regardless.

And they're a massive invasion of privacy, because they in practice require you to have all of your purchases tracked. As if it's Mastercard's business whether you buy birth control, or what books you read, or who you split your restaurant bill with.

Meanwhile anyone engaged in the actually-bad money laundering is doing so because of some criminal activity that they were already subject to prosecution for. You don't need laws against money laundering to go after a drug dealer because you can already charge them with drug dealing.

So in practice what they actually get used for is things like this -- oppression of political undesirables, who need privacy because they're politically vulnerable and then get booted out of the financial system over it, even if they're breaking no other laws.

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

#177

Post by jacquesm »

gridlockd wrote: post #120
some_furry wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24894248

That "tiny minority" still has an outsized impact. The pareto principle applies to pretty much everything.

That's as much to be attributed to the asymmetry between destruction and creation as it is to the pareto principle.

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

#178

Post by jacquesm »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #93
ceejayoz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is disingenuous to conflate "banned from private companies" with "banned from public utilities". They're vastly different on a legal level.

Yes, they are vastly different on a legal level. Still, I think the parent comment's analogy is very valid. AFAIK I don't know any instances of, say, car companies refusing to sell a car to the KKK or some other neo-Nazi group, and I think a lot of people would be very uneasy if all your purchases, even from private companies, were vetted based on your political ideology. To clarify, I don't think that's what's happe…

We always look at who our prospects are and if they are unethical then we will be more than happy to deny them service. It's happened a couple of times now.

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

#179

Post by cft »

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.

That's called selective enforcement

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

#180

Post by cft »

dashundchen wrote: post #83
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…

Yes, I think many people commenting here have jumped to react to the headline with their own political views, not the article. Perhaps the title should reflect it's over money laundering, not content of Epik's clients. Anyone who has read stories of or dealt with Paypal before knows they will cut off access if they even have an inkling of illegal activity happening. Their relationship with the banks and payment proce…

That's called selective enforcement
Post reply on HN