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

181–190 of 243 posts

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

#181

Post by parliament32 »

freeone3000 wrote: post #31

They chose to not participate with PayPal, and invent their own currency, and in exchange, PayPal stopped dealing with them. Their questions were fairly basic KYC form-letter questions anyone selling a financial service should be able to answer - if they couldn't, they might be in trouble with the SEC, not just PayPal.

It's odd though cause Masterbucks isn't crypto, it's just a gift-card-esque balance service. Similar to how you'd have a PayPal "balance" you can send to other people or spend on stuff, and "top up" buy linking a CC or buying a card at 7-Eleven.

PayPal might've just realized they're a competitor.

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

#182

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

kypro wrote: post #72
ceejayoz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing services to groups like this can be a PR disaster far more revenue-impacting than having to mop a floor.

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.

On the other hand, you think it's fair and reasonable that a business be compelled to transact with customers that they believe might be net bad for business?

You say "unpopular political belief", I say "DDoS target, litigation risk, potential product boycott".

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

#183

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

rndgermandude wrote: post #78
gruez wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Private companies terminating accounts of their own volition is not censorship. Are you conflating 1st amendment protections with "censorship"? Definition of censorship: >The use of state or group power to control freedom of expression or press, such as passing laws to prevent media from being published or propagated. (emphasis mine)

Indeed, companies may have the legal right to censor like this, but it's censorship regardless.

You can draw the definition as widely as you like: not even the ACLU says that censorship carried out by private citizens is illegal or that the right response to it is more laws.

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

#184

Post by umvi »

root_axis wrote: post #165
umvi wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> How does one self host their own online speech then Pay for hosting. > that thing should not be controlled by a private company How would this be possible in a capitalist country?

> Pay for hosting.

And what's to stop whichever company is hosting me from dropping hosting at the first whiff of a Twitter mob?

> How would this be possible in a capitalist country?

So you are saying free speech on the internet is incompatible with a capitalist economy?

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

#185

Post by lozaning »

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.

Last I checked this was only applicable to residential service. If you pay for their business solution you can do whatever you want.

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

#186

Post by lykr0n »

cft wrote: post #180
dashundchen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It totally is. They're selectively enforcing their policy against people large enough to catch the attention of PayPal's Compliance Teams.

Automated actions are taken against small accounts, Manual Enforcement will happen against large accounts.

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

#188

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

parliament32 wrote: post #181
freeone3000 wrote: post #31

They chose to not participate with PayPal, and invent their own currency, and in exchange, PayPal stopped dealing with them. Their questions were fairly basic KYC form-letter questions anyone selling a financial service should be able to answer - if they couldn't, they might be in trouble with the SEC, not just PayPal.

It's odd though cause Masterbucks isn't crypto, it's just a gift-card-esque balance service. Similar to how you'd have a PayPal "balance" you can send to other people or spend on stuff, and "top up" buy linking a CC or buying a card at 7-Eleven. PayPal might've just realized they're a competitor.

PayPal is undeniably a money transmitter, a type of money service business that is required to required to register as such and perform certain minimum levels of compliance work.

If Masterbucks is "like PayPal" from that perspective, subject to certain de minimis thresholds, then they too are likely to require registration.

Frankly, if this is the case, and the Epik people are complaining that PayPal's due-diligence questions on these topics are "absolutely absurd, and well outside of any knowledge or experience [they] have as a domain registrar" then perhaps they oughtn't to be running that kind of a business?

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

#189

Post by djsumdog »

mmastrac wrote: post #169
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, this is not a "clear slippery slope fallacy". A slippery slope fallacy is a claim about a series of events, with each even being more unlikely than the one before it. GP makes no claim of a series of events at all. GP is merely pointing out that often, societal norms have been immoral, despite the "wisdom of the time" saying that challenging the norm is immoral. And society doesn't realize they were wrong unti…

Sorry, you missed something. The parent post literally called out the next step on the "slippery slope": "but what about when they cut funding for your Mastodon server or phpBB board because of a few posts you've put up they don't like?" > You bring up Canada and Germany, even though we have no idea how good or bad of an impact those laws will have This makes no sense. We literally do know how good or bad of an impac…

So, it's not a slippery soap because it's already happened. I wrote this back in 2017 about the case of CloudFlair, DreamHost and others:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-new-era-of-corporate-...

The example in this article is a little different because Epik was cut off because their cryptocurrency operation didn't make any attempt to be right with the SEC.

As far as Canada goes, Mike Ward was fined $80,000 for making a joke. Mark Meechan was fined £800 in the UK for a comedy routine where he taught his dog to make a Hitler salute. I have personally know many Germans who have told me there are things they cannot criticize or say because they are German (referring to the Israeli/Palestine conflict).

I wrote some more on the freedom to speak here:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/why-i-no-longer-hate-amer...

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

#190

Post by root_axis »

umvi wrote: post #184
root_axis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does one self host their own online speech then Pay for hosting. > that thing should not be controlled by a private company How would this be possible in a capitalist country?

> Pay for hosting. And what's to stop whichever company is hosting me from dropping hosting at the first whiff of a Twitter mob? > How would this be possible in a capitalist country? So you are saying free speech on the internet is incompatible with a capitalist economy?

> And what's to stop whichever company is hosting me from dropping hosting at the first whiff of a Twitter mob?

Money that you pay them for the service. This is almost always enough since that's all any of these companies actually care about. There are very rare exceptions where high-profile nazi groups have had their service contracts rescinded, but this isn't a real problem in practice. Nobody is having their service contract rescinded because their website is made up of conservatives, which is usually the implied subtext in these discussions.

> So you are saying free speech on the internet is incompatible with a capitalist economy?

No. I'm asking you how you envision people owning their own websites without any private companies involved, in an economy built around the concepts of corporate ownership.

Post reply on HN