
Coinbase bans the accounts of Gab and its founder - largehotcoffee
https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1081255271429681153
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benj111
I'm not a fan of gab by any stretch, but I find it deeply disturbing that
payment processors can unilaterally withdraw service like this.

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wakeywakeywakey
I keep seeing this sentiment in similar threads (i.e. Cloudflare, Twitter,
etc...). Gab has a right to free speech and association. Does Coinbase not
enjoy the same right?

Until a service becomes so widespread and essential as to be declared a public
good/utility, this looks like 'business is business' IMO.

~~~
benj111
Well you can't accept hard currency on the internet, so payment processors are
kind of essential.

Also business is business only gets you so far. What happens if service was
withdrawn because the user was black?

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Barrin92
>What happens if service was withdrawn because the user was black?

in the analog world countries provide civil rights protections for day to day
commerce for this type of situation, in the digital world it's unlikely to
ever matter that you are black, unless you state so in the first place.

The question itself shines light on the important difference here. Gab is not
discriminated because of some natural feature about them, they are
discriminated against because they _act_ like unsavoury people that nobody
wants to be associated with.

Nope, being black is not the same as being a troll or a fascist on the
internet. People have the right to not be associated with you if you present
yourself in a manner that alienates other customers or is simply incompatible
with our values at large.

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deogeo
What if it was socialists, union organizers, or environmentalists getting
discriminated against? Will we also tell them to stop _acting_ in a way that
makes businesses not want to be associated with them?

You said 'incompatible with _our_ values', but it's not 'us' that make these
decisions by voting or something, it's a handful of corporations.

~~~
Barrin92
Well personal disclosure I'm pretty staunchly left so I'm not going to lie, I
think It'd be pretty bad of a business to discriminate against those groups
but I think at least the case can be made that those groups have the potential
to disrupt the platform and everybody else on it through their political
activity, so I think the owner has some legitimate discretion.

I do agree that there should be basic protections on private platforms for
speech, especially if people are threatened to be excluded based on ethnic or
religious or apolitical identity. But I think it would be absurd to say, if a
company could not shut down a threatening or violent, or otherwise outside of
the norm organisation.

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Traster
I find it interesting the process that seems to have taken place here. There
is quite clearly no monopoly on payment systems on the internet. There's bank
transfer, visa, western union, paypal, a million different bitcoin exchanges.

So for Gab to not have access to funds either one of two things can be true.
1: There is a large conspiracy of banking organisations to stifle Gab for
reasons we can speculate about. 2: Each of these organisations have seen Gab
and made individual decisions about whether they want to associate themselves
with Gab.

What boggles my mind is how many people think that it must be 1.

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sadris
Gab has been rejected from 18 banks.

So closer to 1.

~~~
beatgammit
Can you prove, or at least find _some_ evidence of conspiracy? Gab is an
unpopular service, and doing business with them would become news and risk
their other customers, so it's not too surprising that payment processors and
banks choose to not to business with them.

I think it's less conspiracy and more defensive business strategy.

I wish payment processing and banking were more anonymous, and I'm very
interested in projects like GNU Taler[1] that seek to find privacy conscious
ways of doing transactions online. However, if they can't even find a bank to
do business with them (or start one themselves), they're kind of screwed.

\- [1]
[http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/taler/](http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/taler/)

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bitxbitxbitcoin
Operation Choke Point still lives. It isn’t Coinbase’s fault though, arguably.

