PayPal Fail, Customers Desert Them, Which Opens the Market for Alternatives Such as TruthPay

PayPal intends to fine and deducts $2500 from PayPal users’ accounts for spending misinformation, even though they have backtracked must be one of the dumbest ideas ever.

And to make it worse, there are plenty of alternative fintech start-ups eager to eat their lunch, especially as one of its competitors in Stripe goes woke.

Truthcoin, a part of the TruthGroup is developing its TruthPay, a crypto and credit card combined merchant processing app, that says it will refuse to censor and will go for the merchant market of those to be rudely edited by having their stripe or PayPal accounts closed

PayPal punished for spreading misinformation – about itself…

I owe Fred Pawle an apology – at least, that was how I intended to start this article until I saw the latest trending hashtag on Sunday afternoon.

We had a friendly disagreement on ADHTV last week (27:00 mark) regarding PayPal’s addiction to censorship.

Like many prominent conservatives, Fred fell down on the side of ‘cancel PayPal’ while I chose to point out that the only true victims of a mass conservative cancellation are independent conservative writers and creatives.

As has happened to myself, and many others who rely on the generosity of strangers to support their work, boycotting PayPal has resulted in us writing – essentially – for free. Already, we are seeing conservative writers throw in the towel and leave political commentary and citizen journalism for a job that will actually feed them.

It was my argument that instead of abandoning PayPal and assisting in the destruction of conservative media, we should instead focus our attention (especially those commentators lucky enough to have TV, radio, and legacy print access) on pressuring the government to rope online payment gateways into similar legislation as the banks.

Companies like PayPal are, after all, essentially banking services.

Politicians have ignored the rise of online payment gateways and their increasing trend toward political censorship. This leniency has encourage real banks to adopt some of their shady practices, such as using ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ terms of service statements to circumnavigate banking legislation. I wrote about this Woke cross-pollination a few months ago.

How long before your bank accounts are frozen or interest rates adjusted because you purchased meat or spoke out against government policy? Not long.

So far, the government has shown no desire to rein banks and payments gateways in – probably because our politicians have plans to enforce ‘sustainable’ policies via economic threat. Either way, someone needs to call them out and fix this grease-laden slope toward the communist cliff.

PayPal has always cancelled users it doesn’t like. Freelance journalists have been their preferred target, particularly if they fall onto the libertarian or conservative side of politics. Account balances have been withheld from users for astonishing periods of time to cover so-called ‘damages’, but as this behaviour has been confined to celebrity-status writers, most have continued to use the service. It is more common for accounts to vanish without explanation (other than a generic ‘we don’t like you very much’ notice similar to a Twitter ban).

The digital gulag went a bit too far went it attacked Gays Against Groomers. As the title suggests, it is an account that seeks to call out behaviour within the LGBTQ+ community that appears to facilitate child grooming – a disturbing trend that is on the rise on social media and in schools where sexualised adults are being put in close proximity to children.

‘Gays Against Groomers is a coalition of gay people who oppose the recent trend of indoctrinating and sexualising children under the guise of LGBTQIA+.’

It’s the sort of activism you’d expect to be non-controversial in a normal world, but 2022 is far from normal where the surgical mutilation of children in the name of affirmation is now considered a thriving business rather than a crime.

PayPal sent the organisation the following message:

Dear Gays Against Groomers,

We have recently reviewed your PayPal account activity, and determined that you are in violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy regarding your use of the PayPal products.

As a result, your account has been permanently limited, with no further ability to send or receive funds. Please remove all references to PayPal from your website/s and/or auctions/s. This includes not only removing PayPal as a payment option, but also the PayPal logo and PayPal shopping cart.

‘The fact that PayPal and Venmo banned an organisation completely comprised of gay people, which also has multiple trans contributors, that exists solely to safeguard children from predators, says everything you need to know about the state of our society.

‘These platforms claim to promote and support minorities, especially from the LGBT community, but clearly that only applies when they fall in line with the agenda being pushed.’

It didn’t help PayPal’s virtuous standing that they allowed ‘Minor-Attracted Persons’ groups and support networks to stay on their platform. (MAP is a nice way of saying ‘people who are considering becoming paedophiles’.)

The Free Speech Union and Daily Sceptic were also banned, with British founder Toby Young writing that they were given no specific reason for their removal. Aside from being advocates for free speech, the sites were in the process of exposing Covid lockdowns and mRNA vaccines – opinions considered ‘misinformation’ by the self-appointed authority of Big Tech. With a significant portion of their income originating via PayPal, the decision (even though it was eventually reversed with an equally vague reason) had significant consequences.

Public backlash to the banning was severe. It triggered an outpouring of ‘cancel PayPal’ hashtags from some of the largest conservative speakers. Untold thousands of accounts were dropped and, as I said in the opening of this piece, the people who really suffered were conservative writers who lost their audience overnight.

The conservatives in positions of power who led the charge to cancel PayPal did not rely on it for their meal ticket. I didn’t see any of them, particularly American commentators, stop for even a second to think about what would happen to their less privileged peers, although I concede that most have no idea how the poorer writers operate in a game that seems perpetually rigged against success.

PayPal has a pattern of dramatically reversing its decision to cancel high-profile accounts if the public reaction is excessive. The back-tracking is usually accompanied by mutterings of there being a ‘mistake’ as if they expect us to believe the censorship of some of their largest customers is a random error from a sweaty-palmed intern.

Shortly after their latest ‘our bad!’ moment, PayPal sent all of its customers a hastily re-written terms of service update. A soft of, ‘you may have won the battle, but we shall win the war’ declaration that changed PayPal’s terms of service to allow it to censor anyone in the future for posting stuff it doesn’t like or agree with under the catch-all descriptions of ‘hate’ and ‘misinformation’. Remember, PayPal is a payment gateway, not a social media company. This is essentially a bank perusing your socials.

My email arrived on September 28, and informed me that, ‘We’re making some changes to our legal agreements that will apply to you.’

These included: 

We are expanding the existing list of prohibited activities to include the sending, posting, or publication of messages, content, or materials that meet certain criteria.

The update that nearly resulted in me issuing an apology to Fred and crossing the picket lines with a call for everyone to close their PayPal accounts was the astonishing claim that PayPal would ‘fine’ its customers $2,500 for every violation of its ‘misinformation’ policy with the money to be taken directly from their PayPal account.

‘Violation of this Acceptable Use Policy constitutes a violation of the PayPal User Agreement and may subject you to damages, including liquidated damages of $2,500.00 U.S. dollars per violation, which may be debited directly from your PayPal account(s) as outlined in the User Agreement.’

It’s a brave company that threatens to steal thousands of dollars from its customers because it doesn’t like what they say online. GoFundMe attempted to take money that had been donated, but PayPal was proposing to extract fines.

I still do not understand how such a thing would be legal, considering retailers cannot take money off customers for any reason. Back in the real world, the only entities that can issue fines are police and the courts. Sure, you can write terms of service, but those are limited to the confines of law. PayPal, for instance, cannot threaten to take your firstborn child as payment for perceived damages regarding your Twitter war last night.

The reason I didn’t publish an article when this news began trending was that I doubted PayPal could sustain the threat. And I was right. Less than a day after their sneaky cash grab went public, PayPal walked the whole thing back, claiming that their policy on ‘misinformation’ was – itself – misinformation that ‘went out in error’.

BabylonBee couldn’t write a better script.

‘An AUP notice recently went out in error that included incorrect information. PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy. Our teams are working to correct our policy pages. We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused.’

Question: where did the proposition come from? Who thought up the figure? Was the subject of fining customers mulled over in the PayPal boardroom?

David Marcus, PayPal’s former president, tweeted:

‘It’s hard for me to openly criticise a company I used to love and gave so much to. But @PayPal’s new AUP goes against everything I believe in. A private company now gets to decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with. Insanity.’

A comment to which Elon Musk replied, ‘Agreed.’

You know what else it caused? One of the biggest PayPal exoduses by conservatives in PayPal’s history. We may never know how many accounts closed (PayPal isn’t exactly advertising it), but we can read online messages from conservatives posting confirmation that they have ditched the service.

Just moved all money I had in my PayPal account out of it. And I very must suggest you do the same.

This is serious.

They are delaying the transfer “pending review” for 12 hours. But at least it’s done. #PayPal is dead. pic.twitter.com/Cr1EA1yQjh

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) October 8, 2022

We don’t need PayPal, They need us!#paypal

— Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence) October 9, 2022

We don’t need PayPal, They need us!#paypal

— Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence) October 9, 2022

And so, independent conservative and libertarian writers are back where they started – demonetised. I don’t blame anyone for closing their PayPal accounts. The threat of being fined for speaking is insanity.

However, right when we need as many people fighting against the expansion of globalism, tyranny, and censorship – another generation of writers will put down their pens and join the breadline.

If Elon Musk or Donald Trump are serious about their pledges to protect free speech, their first priority should be to set up a payment gateway to facilitate a genuine free market for ideas – a capitalism of speech in which more voices can join in to combat the Left who are paid with billions in taxes, donations from Woke CEOs, and bankrolled by globalists who seek to make a profit from our silence.

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Editor’s Note

Truth coin

Truth coin www.truthcoin.social is Truthbook’s currency that will enable us all to share the truth via Truthbook.social. Truthcoin is not just a Global Payment system, it is Truthbook’s currency like Facebook has Libra, but it will also help fund the growth of Truthbook.social (a platform that’s free from Globalists’ control) to compete against the large multi-billion dollar competitors.

TruthBook, backed by Truthcoin, will not support the Great Reset Agenda or the vaccine digital passport. This enables everyone to support and benefit from building a better world, by the people for the people, a force for good.

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Resource: https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/paypal-punished-for-spreading-misinformation-about-itself/