151–160 of 349 posts
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Oh not this old canard again. The US constitutional guarantee of freedom from government interference in speech is just one aspect of the matter . If private companies own every method of articulating your views, and are preventing you from doing so, then you aren't free to speak.
Yes but in this case they're specifically referring to free speech in a legal context.
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This story has pushed me over the line, finally triggering me to close my PayPal account. I can't describe the sum total of stimuli that brought me here, it's a gestalt, a gut feeling. Thanks. I feel lighter.
PayPal is excellent for buyers, horrible for sellers. Just don't keep any money in it and don't let them convert currency for you.
PayPal is such a weird company. I was a loyal customer for 20 years until I wanted to convert my account from business to personal (I closed the business) and the site refused to do so. after months of calls with support, it became clear that no one was able to do this (something locked the flow and no one was able to see what; I guess my account was so ancient, it has some db flags no longer used but still checked b…
I've contacted one time PayPal Japan to transfer money to a personal account from PayPal Brazil because it gave me some error. They told me I should contact PayPal Brazil because the recipient account was not verified. On PayPal Brazil, they told me that I could only transfer personal money through Xoom, which is another service from PayPal. But when I tried, Xoom doesn't work with Japan. After I asked PayPal Japan a…
It's worth knowing that in the UK PayPal is covered by the Financial Ombudsman service. They wouldn't be interested in accounts being blocked as in this case but they were very helpful to me when PayPal made a payment that I did not authorize and then refused to put it right. I don't use PayPal any more. Their support staff are impossibility hopeless so any kind of problem with your account will cause you a world of…
This article reminds me of the epic patio11's thread: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/906384638733467648 "You do not want to be read as someone who is angry and needs to be talked down. You want to be read as someone collecting a paper trail."
> While PayPal is technically a private company that can work with basically whoever it wants for whatever reason, its centralized role as an online payment processor makes this a weirdly potent free speech fight. > He did share correspondence with me where prominent free speech attorneys told him, in an apparent contradiction to my claims, that he had no viable legal recourse to getting his account reinstated. Thoug…
Heck, the literal phrasing is "Congress shall not abridging the freedom of speech". The fact that congress is mentioned means that others can also abridge the freedom of speech.
Note that 'abridge' means diminish in scope. If your boss says "If you say ducks are nice, you will be fired" that affects your freedom of speech. It isn't a first-amendment issue unless your boss is the government. But it remains someone inhibiting your speech.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh not this old canard again. The US constitutional guarantee of freedom from government interference in speech is just one aspect of the matter . If private companies own every method of articulating your views, and are preventing you from doing so, then you aren't free to speak.
> If private companies own every method of articulating your views, They aren't. We're nowhere even close. To the point where I can't even envision how that could happen. Perhaps in some sort of fantasy libertarian future where everything has been privatized, including the streets and sidewalks. But that's certainly not anything like now.
We are pretty close - Mastercard and Visa's (non-public) BRAM rules are pretty clumsy and arbitrary, and effectively do have a tremendous impact on global speech as they are effectively a duopoly. Their terms apply to essentially every business that requires any revenue, and therefore any platforms that people might want to speak on.
That is a problem. A terrible one. And they abuse it.
PayPal is such a weird company. I was a loyal customer for 20 years until I wanted to convert my account from business to personal (I closed the business) and the site refused to do so. after months of calls with support, it became clear that no one was able to do this (something locked the flow and no one was able to see what; I guess my account was so ancient, it has some db flags no longer used but still checked b…
I hate that I have to do this and to be viewed as defending a vile organization like PayPal but this specific incident here could be the result of another department/silo (compliance/anti-fraud?) within the corporation issuing an immediate ban for your account to avoid or limit any regulatory burden.
In the UK, paypal recently generated a lot of adverse publicity for banning the Free Speech Union [0] for, er, free speech [1]. This has now generated such controversy that MPs are proposing amendments in parliament preventing Paypal from blocking accounts on political grounds. [0] https://freespeechunion.org/about/ [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/27/paypal-reins...
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I lost access to a PayPal account I had used for years, because one day they decided they needed to know the CVV of a long-expired credit card, and refused to let me log in without it. Surprisingly, customer support was very helpful and let me transfer out the (minimal) balance in the account to another, completely unconnected PayPal business account I happened to have. Which is even more disconcerting, because it me…
I closed my account when they discovered suspicious activity in my account, at least claimed so but apart from locking me out until I prove I am me with photo ID copy and independent sources about my address (bank statement, utility bill, ...), basically collecting more data on me, they did not make any steps tracking down this suspicious activity, not even explaining what it was, they did not report it to the author…