Essay by Eric Worrall
Paypal stirred a firestorm over an apparent threat to pull money from the accounts of people whose views they don’t like, before apparently backing down.
PayPal Reverses Course, Says Company Will Not Seize Money From People for Promoting ‘Misinformation’
By Zachary Stieber
October 8, 2022 Updated: October 8, 2022PayPal on Oct. 8 said it was not implementing a new policy that would have enabled the company to seize money from users who allegedly promote “misinformation” or “hate.”
“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,” a PayPal spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.
“Our teams are working to correct our policy pages. We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused,” the spokesperson added.
The company in September announced that it was amending its acceptable use policy, or AUP.
The policy, due to take effect in November, said that users may not use PayPal to for the “sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing, or objectionable, (b) depict or appear to depict nudity, sexual or other intimate activities, (c) depict or promote illegal drug use, (d) depict or promote violence, criminal activity, cruelty, or self-harm (e) depict, promote, or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) (f) present a risk to user safety or wellbeing, (g) are fraudulent, promote misinformation, or are unlawful, (h) infringe the privacy, intellectual property rights, or other proprietary rights of any party, or (i) are otherwise unfit for publication.”
For each violation, PayPal says users are subject to repercussions. Those include “liquated damages” of $2,500 per violation. The money will be taken directly from a person’s PayPal account.
…
Read more: https://www.theepochtimes.com/paypal-reverses-course-says-company-will-not-seize-money-for-promoting-misinformation_4783827.html
Paypal is widely perceived as a woke, climate alarmist anti-conservative organisation. Shutting down and disrupting the activities of law abiding groups who entered into an agreement with Paypal in good faith is bad enough, but arbitrarily “fining” people for holding views Paypal considers misinformation would be an even more outrageous attack on free speech and liberty.
WUWT will be keeping an eye on this issue. Paypal claim the apparent threat to arbitrarily “fine” people whose views they believe are misinformation was all a big misunderstanding, but frankly I don’t trust them.
You guys really accept their excuse that it was an inadvertent mistake?
Policies are OKed by the board of directors and then in a big company are reviewed by the legal department before being issued.
IMO there is no way that policy was issued by mistake. Only after massive blowback did they begin backpedaling and making excuses.
I don’t think anyone’s that dumb. It’s just another insult by PP to imagine anyone would buy that it was a mistake.
The use of the words “alleged threat” in the title indicates to me otherwise.
The title is attributing the wording to Paypal (hence the “Paypal:” at the very beginning of the title) and derives it from the very first sentence of the article being quoted:
Though to be more accurate to the article, the title should probably be reworded as:
“Paypal denies threat of Money Seizure from Users who Promote Alleged “Misinformation”
or
“Paypal walks back threat of Money Seizure from Users who Promote Alleged “Misinformation”
That make me so mad! 😡
I’d close my PayPal account… if I had one.
It’s the thought that counts.
Here in the UK the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) has the role of overseeing the financial industry. All financial business providers have to conform with fair and legal practices.
I am sure the terms and conditions that PP were pushing, i.e. demanding the right to take $2,500 per breach of their own definition of what is information and what is unacceptable information is completely illegal.
I would be shocked, if the FCA did not put out a comment/ruling on this.
It might be worth checking out New Day ltd 690292 FCA ref No. company No. 07297722
We await their comment with interest.
Prepare to be shocked.
FCA 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Chocolate teapot.
PayPal CEO, earlier this year: “The difficult part there is identifying what is hatred and what is freedom of speech”
That’s easy. “Hate speech” is any speech that the left hates.
Why does he think it’s his job as CEO to try? Doesn’t he have enough to do?
Close your PayPal account now! Mine is now closed. Hurt them in the pocketbook for this un-American fascism.
Mine’s now closed after 22 years. Had no idea they were fascists.
One of the most despicable episodes in corporate history for years. Paypal execs at the forefront of the anti-freedom push by the democrats.
Taking someone’s money on a whim is called ‘theft’.
The arrogance of these people is breathtaking. They declare themselves arbiters on scientific and medical subjects of which they are fully ignorant. Perhaps it is because they are ignorant, so ignorant that they don’t even know it.
Just a primer for digital banking.
I’ve been threaten with being banned from complaining to the BBC the final paragraphs of their last reply.
“Separately, I have been reviewing the history of your complaints to the BBC.
The BBC’s Complaints Framework is publicly available, and I would refer you to Annex B. This explains the steps the BBC may take if it considers there is misuse of the complaints service.
Since June you have submitted approximately 17 complaints to the BBC, which focus on science and environment stories and seem to be informed less by the facts of the matter and more by your own views.
As the complaints framework points out:
“…the BBC devotes considerable resources to handling complaints, and in fairness to everyone – other complainants, BBC staff and the public at large who pay the licence fee – it is right that we should try to focus those resources on complaints that raise significant issues and substantial concerns”.
While we continue to review and respond at this stage, we believe many of these complaints are clearly without merit and so I am writing to make you aware that should this pattern continue, we will need to consider applying Annex B to the complaints we receive from you, in order to ensure fairness to other licence fee payers.
Thank you again for contacting the BBC.”
As it’s like beating your head against a brick wall it might be a blessing in disguise.
In this case they checked with Orsted about Hornsea 2, not unlike checking with a motor manufacturer about fuel consumption.
Tighten corporate governance. Companies that want to many changes to terms and conditions that materially affect the bottom line must be ratified by shareholder majority vote. That is the only way to defenestrate the woke mini-me within these corporate structures. If the shareholders want to lose money through pursuit of the woke agenda they can vote for it.
But the shareholders are, in the main, large institutional investors who have gone woke themselves.
I think a lot of people are missing a major element.
A private entity cannot impose ” fines” or monetary punishments.
Paypal is endeavouring to get around this by levying what it calls “liquidated damages”.
People should be aware, liqiuidated damages are NOT punitive measures. They are not penalties.
They are included in contracts to reimburse one or other party for difficult to quantify damages that may be caused by the other party’s performance or other failure.
Since they are “damages”, an essential element prior to imposition of liquidated damages is that there actually are some real damages, i.e. cost to the other party.
If there is no damage, no cost, LD’s are unenforceable.
It is virtually impossible to conceive how a user’s “disinformation” or other alleged activity could cause loss or damage to Paypal.
Without actual damage to it, levying LD’s would be a malicious action by Paypal.
Sue them, get the LD refunded, and get punitive damages awarded against Paypal.
Good luck with that. Lawsuits are expensive and can drag on for years. Paypal has deeper pockets than you for the battle. And even if you do manage to “win” you might still be a long way away from ever collecting (a “win” is just the beginning, as there can be seemingly endless appeals and other legal maneuvers that can continue to drag it out and possibly even reverse or reduce the win. Just ask Mikey Mann, he can tell you all about it.
You are right.
But so am I. In a fair, properly functioning justice system, Paypal would lose hands down in court at every level.
But you are cynically but correctly referring to the result of the judicial system being corrupted by money and power. Paypal has the money and power, therefore……..
Nevertheless, it remains a legal principle that there must be actual damage before LD’s can be imposed, and Paypal has described their proposed penalty as Liquidated Damages. Even with the corrupted system, Paypal would still have a very challenging case to make in order to win.
I’ve just tried to log in to PayPal but it refuses to accept my genuine/correct email and password entries.
Must be telepathy; for my intent was to cancel my account in any case🤔
Looks like they’ve done it for me without telling me what my sin was.
The arrogance is unbelievable.
The fact that they even considered doing this makes them too crazy to do business with.
PayPal has inserted their policy beliefs into their business model from day one. People STILL use it. I have no sympathy.
I haven’t used it for a long while, but account closed and will not be doing business with them in the future.
they backed down on the “misinformation” violation … they will still “fine” you for something that … depict, promote, or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.
not sure what etc. is as a protected characteristic …
Years ago there was a site called ‘paypalsuck’ or something similar but now redirects to paypal. The site laid it on the line as to what paypal got up to. I knew then what a scam and problamatic that paypal was and hence always avoided them.
As others will more than likely suggest do not touch paypal. If you want an alternative there is ‘GabPay’. Gab is an alternative to twitter and Gab was crapped all over by paypal by removing their account for no reason.
I personally just use one credit card and that’s it. If I cannot use it then the business does not get my business.
Regards
Climate Heretic
My PayPal is going to be closed by today – good riddance to the payment Nazis.
What they actually meant to say was “yes, we were absolutely intending to do that, because despite it being blatantly illegal, we are blinded by our self righteousness. But we got caught, so now we will pretend it was an ‘error’ with a straight face, because we have no shame.”
Came across this by sheer coincidence:
“I don’t think it’s too vainglorious to say that PayPal’s current difficulties began in the middle of last month when, without any notice, it closed the accounts of the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic, both of which I run, as well as my personal account. Getting any coherent explanation out of the company as to why it had done so proved difficult – it kept coming up with different reasons…”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/will-I-be-PayPals-downfall
Never had PayBigbro and never will. About to kill my venmo too. I’ll just go back to the old fashioned way of paying friends for stuff…$$.