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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

#221

Post by colejohnson66 »

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…

You’re ignoring that they refused to answer the KYC laws in the US. You know, those laws that require PayPal to ask certain questions, and to refuse business if they don’t answer?

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

#222

Post by amanaplanacanal »

umvi wrote: post #194
root_axis wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 There are very rare exceptions where high-profile nazi groups have had their service contracts rescinded, but this isn't a real problem in practice.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 servi…

> Money that you pay them for the service. This is almost always enough since that's all any of these companies actually care about. "almost always" is not a guarantee of free speech. > There are very rare exceptions where high-profile nazi groups have had their service contracts rescinded, but this isn't a real problem in practice. ...yet. What is "very rare" today can become "more common" tomorrow if there aren't s…

ISP’s should be classified as common carriers. Unfortunately the Trump administration disagrees with that view.

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

#223

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #219
djsumdog wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They don’t care. Today’s political climate (in the US) encourages divisiveness, so if anything can be spun as a left vs. right issue, it will. Especially if it’s a far-left or far-right organization.

A solid warning sign of impending social collapse.

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

#224

Post by jacquesm »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #223
colejohnson66 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t care. Today’s political climate (in the US) encourages divisiveness, so if anything can be spun as a left vs. right issue, it will. Especially if it’s a far-left or far-right organization.

A solid warning sign of impending social collapse.

That's what you get when you start treating politics as though it is a teamsport instead of a way to run a country, and where parties try to undo as much as possible of their predecessors.

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

#225

Post by [deleted] »

ceejayoz wrote: post #62
bioinformatics wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if you go to some business and shit on the floor, maybe we can ban you from the business, the roads that reach said business, ban you from public transportation, ban you for owning a car, bicycle, motorcycle and maybe ban you from owning property. That will show you!

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

[deleted]

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

#226

Post by AnthonyMouse »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #220
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mas…

Genuinely curious: if it’s a growth thing, how did PayPal get where they are today? I know eBay was involved, but not much more than that.

First to market advantage, more or less.

Also, it's even not so much PayPal as Visa and MasterCard, and how they got the way they are involves both politics and backroom dealings.

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

#227

Post by dang »

microcolonel wrote: post #148
pdkl95 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Firstly, the SPLC is a serial defamer and holds truth as a lower priority than essentially anything else. As a matter of principle, I won't defer to them on anything at this point. > "Western chauvinist" literally means "white supremacist" Only if you make several massive leaps in how words "are used". Has it occurred to you that the word "chauvinist" was chosen specifically to get a rise out of people who are overly…

Ok, that's enough. We've re-banned this account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24335263

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23253600

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21757546

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21366367

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20900462

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19937222

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

#228

Post by dang »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #3

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

Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. You not only broke the site guidelines by posting this, you did exactly the thing you were "suspecting".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#229

Post by microcolonel »

dang wrote: post #227
microcolonel wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, the SPLC is a serial defamer and holds truth as a lower priority than essentially anything else. As a matter of principle, I won't defer to them on anything at this point. > "Western chauvinist" literally means "white supremacist" Only if you make several massive leaps in how words "are used". Has it occurred to you that the word "chauvinist" was chosen specifically to get a rise out of people who are overly…

Ok, that's enough. We've re-banned this account. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24335263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23253600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21757546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21366367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20900462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19937222

That's enough of what, Dan? This comment was substantive, responsive to the parent comment, and cordial; it didn't provoke a flame war nor could it be expected to, it didn't include any quips or sick burns.

If you don't like moderating after all this time, and I wouldn't blame you, at least understand I can't help other people spamming the flag button because they disagree with people's good-faith interpretation of facts. If there's a technical solution to that I'd be glad to help.

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

#230

Post by tuesdayrain »

cambalache wrote: post #213
MattGaiser wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and Twitter don't require buying into any particular politics to join.

But as things are going you need to have a very limited ideologically worldview to not get expelled. And I am not taking about silly things like _Hitler was nice_. Do you want recent examples? If you mention the following (you dont even have to support it or believe it) and many people complain there is a big chance you will be banned because of hate-speech: 1. There may be genetic differences in cognitive abilities…

It's true, the list is growing every day. I remember not long ago how the term "sexual preference" became considered offensive overnight, purely for political reasons. It was interesting to see even the dictionary immediately change their definition in response to some twitter drama. Despite the fact that the offense is completely baseless, since people cannot freely change their preferences.
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