
PayPal ends business dealings with Alex Jones's Infowars - petethomas
https://reuters.com/article/BigStory12/idUSKCN1M12NT
======
throwaway_trust
As much as I detest that site, this is now dangerous precedence. Payment
processors choosing not to do business at their whim.

Imagine scenario - there is a totalitarian government in some banana republic
that forces these companies (who are already global) not to support dissidents
of it's regime in order to operate in their countries, what moral high ground
will they take? The totalitarian regime will say you are doing this in US then
why not in our country too?

Internet was supposed to be great equalizer. But supposedly monopolies are
abusing their power. This is too close to net neutrality argument. Payment
processors is oligopoly business like ISPs. It's a high barrier to enter due
to governmental regulations. Now why can't be case made for net neutrality for
payment processors?

And "build your payment processing company" \-- give me a break. Any media
organization can't just build payment processing services. I know there is
BTC/ETH, saving grace for decentralization of Internet and working as true
intended goal.

~~~
rgbrenner
_Payment processors choosing not to do business at their whim._

It's not on a whim.

Payment processors -- including Visa, Amex, Discover, Mastercard -- have clear
rules about hate sites and promoting violence. This is a rule clearly spelled
out that all merchants must follow.

Infowars violates rules they agreed to follow when they became a merchant.
That's breach of contract.

Edit: and here's Paypals AUP:
[https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-
full](https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full)

 _You may not use the PayPal service for activities that: ... relate to
transactions involving ... the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other
forms of intolerance that is discriminatory_

Seriously... that's breach of contract. Does infowars need to follow the
contracts they agree to? Do those that promote hate get to disregard
contracts?

Peddling hate speech does not earn you the ability to disregard contracts you
have agreed to.

~~~
dev_dull
Hate speech is protected free speech. Not because anyone loves hate speech,
but defining your opponents views and journalism as “hate” is very easy to do
depending on your worldview.

~~~
woofyman
That has no relevance in this discussion since the Government wasn’t involved.

~~~
dev_dull
The government intervenes and is involved all of the time in private companies
regarding constitutional rights (e.g., a bakery making cakes for non-
traditional marriages).

I don't like Alex Jones or his view, but we have strong protections for speech
in this country for good reasons and I don't want to see us sacrifice them
because someone we hate comes along.

~~~
woofyman
PayPal has free speech rights as well. Would you force a Black owned printer
to do business with the KKK?

~~~
DuskStar
I mean, we make KKK-owned enterprises do business with black people...

One's a choice and one's not of course, but there is still a comparison to be
made there.

Edit to add: it's possible that being a conspiracy theorist is as much a
choice as being schizophrenic is. If that was the case - true, proved beyond
any doubt, it's genetic or environmental, whatever - would you be willing to
extend the same protections to conspiracy theorists as you would to other
protected classes?

------
rgbrenner
Visa, Discover and Amex prohibit hate-group sites on their networks.
Mastercard doesn't allow merchants that promote or incite violence. PayPal
too, it's the 2nd paragraph in their AUP:
[https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-
full](https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full)

What do you guys expect PayPal to do? Draw a line at InfoWars, and die on
their sword, as the major credit card networks cut them off and kill the
company?

Infowars isn't going to be able to continue processing credit card payments.
It's up to paypal if they want to go with Infowars and die or not.

------
zuttton
People doesn't realize that all this will effect them. Ya, scapegoat the guy
who everyone thinks deserves it. But, then it's on to the people who might
deserve it. Then, they come knocking on your door and you question how. It's
happening right now in front of your eyes. I would be very scared at what is
to come from letting these massive corporations exercise this kind of mass
banning power.

~~~
empath75
So you demand that these private corporations need to do business with someone
they find contemptible? Nobody is putting him in jail. He’s free to speak his
noxious views. And other people are not obligated to publish or advertise on
them.

~~~
bdcravens
As long as it's not a wedding cake, right?

~~~
woodruffw
I think there's a substantial _moral_ difference between (1) a business
discriminating against members of a sexual minority, and (2) a business
discriminating against a dogwhistling conspiracy theorist.

~~~
bdcravens
I agree. I also would say that allowing a company to make decisions based on
moral relativism is an even more slippery slope than we're already on.

~~~
woodruffw
Where's the relativism?

------
educationdata
Paypal's own words:

"We undertook an extensive review of the InfoWars sites, and found instances
that promoted hate and discriminatory intolerance against certain communities
and religions that run counter to our core value of inclusion."

The problems are:

1) There are many websites "promoted hate and discriminatory intolerance
against certain communities and religions". As an atheist, I would say I have
seem many atheist websites doing this.

2) This may not be fair. Nobody would believe Paypal has reviewed the speech
of all the websites using their service. So why did they pick InfoWars? For
what reason? Was that because there were lots of complains? Paypal not only
need to explain why InfoWars should be banned, they also need to explain why
they picked InfoWars.

3) There is no due process. Does InfoWars has a chance to appeal the decision?
Were they informed before the decision was made? Were they given time for
transition?

4) Yes. Paypal as a private company can make this decision. But nobody here is
claiming that Paypal's decision is illegal. Many people feel this is
dangerous, and there are good reasons to feel this way:

a) The nature of Paypal's business has nothing to do with speech. It is
dangerous for a financial company to censor speech. It is different from
facebook or twitter, which are speech platforms, so the content of speech are
important to them. Why should Paypal even care about the speech on other
websites? We do not need financial companies to shape the world of speech.

b) InfoWars promotes hate speech, but it is not illegal in the U.S. It is not
a terrorist group. If it really incited violence, law enforcement will handle
it. The difference between law enforcement and business: law enforcement has
to follow the due process, but business makes arbitrary decision.

------
tareqak
I have a question for the commenters who are disappointed by this event: how
do you feel about PayPal's actions here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18017635](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18017635)
(PayPal’s crackdown on ASMR creators)? If you have a different reaction to
that, then please explain the difference between the two kinds of events for
me as plainly as you can for my understanding.

~~~
tomp
What’s a reasonable explanation of the ASMR ban.

I’m asking because I just don’t see any ewuivalence between these two issues.
I’m personally deeply disappointed by (and oppose) both bans, but at least I
can see _some_ reason for Infowars ban (“he’s spreading harmful information”)
whereas I cannot really come up with any not-obviously-contrived (i.e. “sex-
fear-mongering”) explanation.

~~~
tareqak
My question is aimed at developing my understanding of the people who support
the ASMR ban, but are against the InfoWars one.

~~~
repolfx
Are there any such people?

I tried to figure out what was going on from your story but it's like coming
into the middle of a family fight that's been going on for years. The stuff
they're currently arguing about is probably not how it started.

In particular PayPal says specifically in that article that they don't have
any policies against ASMR (which apparently is mostly videos of women making
weird sound effects?). So why are they suspending accounts, well presumably
they think they're doing it for other reasons. The article goes on to talk
about YouTube being "anti sex" or something so presumably there's more to
these videos than is being let on.

At any rate, I think it's dumb that payment processors suspend accounts for
sex-related stuff too, but that's at least something with a basis in US law so
PayPal may feel they are legally forced to do it. FOSTA is mentioned.

------
noonespecial
Despite my feelings of "It couldn't have happened to a 'nicer' fellow", I
still have to stand by "It shouldn't have happened to _any_ fellow".

------
influx
How far will this go? Banks refusing to finance his mortgage? Grocery stores
banning him from buying food? He hasn’t done anything illegal he’s just an
asshole.

~~~
behringer
Slander is a crime.

~~~
R_haterade
*tort

------
megous
Sadly, these enforcement actions are very selective.

It's not like PayPal or other SV companies for that matter like Patreon really
care about their Community Guidelines.

I reported a person to Patreon some time ago who takes it as a job to spread
hateful/false info about white helmets, even advocating for killing them many
times. High profile enough person to be documented by journalists, and have
special chapters in large reports about russian propaganda. No response. And
it's not like these people are not being killed regularly, by the same
government that regularly tags her in images posted to twitter from their
embassy accounts.

But hey, baby steps.

~~~
darpa_escapee
Bullshit. Paypal drops merchants for arbitrary reasons all of the time.
They've been doing it for over a decade.

~~~
DuskStar
Paypal dropping merchants for arbitrary reasons is not evidence in favor of
them caring about their community guidelines. Consistently dropping merchants
for well-defined violations would be.

------
2_listerine_pls
PayPal would have prevented American Independence, citing violence.

------
wpdev_63
Its paypal business who they do business with but it shows a very low
threshold on the integrity of their service. They may not like what he says or
what's he generally about(I am not a fan of him) but he's not doing anything
illegal. If I was in working in a business they were not a fan of(who knows?),
I would definitely be looking for other options.

They have a history of doing this sort of thing and they have known to be less
than righteous. It's really discerning that a money handler can do something
like this at their whim.

I haven't had great experiences doing typical business with them.

------
dev_dull
The barrier to being categorized as “hate speech” seems to becoming
increasingly easier to apply.

------
R_haterade
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to
receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man
might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the
number of his name.

------
Censorme
Damn they really are doing a number on him. A conspiracy to silence Alex Jones
and deplatform him completely.. I never really saw him as a serious guy to
over the top screaming etc.. but this is pretty insane.

~~~
jsmeaton
A conspiracy implies all of these companies .. conspired, rather than
independently reaching a conclusion that supporting this fellow with their
services was bad for their own business.

~~~
tomp
How could they “independently” reach the same conclusion at roughly the same
time?

I’m not saying they necessarily “conspired”, could be as simple as one CEO
seeing the news and saying “that’s a good idea, we should do that too”, but
the chances of these decisions being completely independent is almost zero.

~~~
jsmeaton
Either it’s a conspiracy or it is not. If there are a bunch of people running
down the street, and I see that they’re running from a fire, then I’m going to
run too. That is not a conspiracy. The decision is independent even if the
reason is shared.

That’s not to say it’s just one big coincidence.

------
jsendros
What the fuck are these comments? At some point, when _everyone_ has shut you
out, don't you realize that _you_ are the problem?

~~~
andybak
Some people think abstract principles matter more than specific edge-cases.

~~~
noelsusman
I'll just throw out that it's not a coincidence which specific edge-cases
these people choose to get up in arms about.

Like, I don't see a lot of outrage from free speech types when liberal
professors get fired for saying stupid shit. It's only a certain kind of
speech being suppressed that they seem to care about.

[http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/college/ut-
condemns-t...](http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/college/ut-condemns-
teacher-whose-tweet-blames-harvey-on-texas-gop-vote/2335504)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2017/06/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2017/06/26/professor-fired-after-defending-blacks-only-event-on-fox-
news-i-was-publicly-lynched-she-says/)

~~~
sheepmullet
> Like, I don't see a lot of outrage from free speech types when liberal
> professors get fired for saying stupid shit

Is it the same thing?

A better example would be if power companies and phone companies started
disconnecting liberal professors for saying stupid shit.

~~~
noelsusman
I wasn't trying to make an analogy to this specific situation. You're right
that it's not the same. I was just pointing out things I've noticed about the
broader free speech discussion.

------
convery
Cue the: "if you don't like it; just create your own internet and payment-
processor" responses.

------
trophycase
I don't care about Alex Jones, but this is why we need Bitcoin.

~~~
bdcravens
We have Bitcoin, but it is still more challenging to use than Paypal for most
users.

~~~
andirk
Use Square's Cash App. It has USD and BTC

------
dboreham
BTC buy signal?

------
bdcravens
I fear Mr. Jones will go from being a fringe loon to being a major talking
point in 2020, spoon feeding people what they want to hear about their fears
(similar to what we saw in 2016).

------
CapitalistCartr
The First Amendment isn't defended at Michelangelo's "David", but at Larry
Flynt's "Hustler".

~~~
waterphone
The First Amendment doesn't obligate private companies to do business with
people or other businesses they don't want to be involved with.

If the U.S. government were ordering his accounts closed, you might have an
argument.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
The ideal is bigger than that. If we only support rights for people and ideas
we support, then they aren't rights. Freedom of speech is not just a
constraint on our government; its an ideal that only survives if we stand up
for it vigorously. Its absurd to expect our government to be a better "person"
than we expect of ourselves.

~~~
camel_Snake
Do we have a right to a business's services though? Should bars be unable to
ban unruly customers? I don't see how this is very different.

------
mschuster91
About damn time. There are limits to "free speech", namedly when said speech
is inciting racial hatred.

And it's about time companies realize their role in actually _enabling_ the
hatred - and act upon their responsibility.

~~~
driverdan
> namedly when said speech is inciting racial hatred.

There is no such limit in the US.

~~~
mschuster91
> There is no such limit in the US.

...which makes the US fairly unique in the world. Nearly all other developed
countries have developed laws to combat hate speech. With the result being
that the US is probably the _only_ country in the world where people wearing
swastika flags and doing the Hitler salute will be _defended_ by ordinary
citizens.

400k US citizens died in WW2 fighting the Nazi regime and in 2018 open Nazis
can carry the swastika flag in the US. What a disgrace.

~~~
deathanatos
We (or, I hope, some of us) still believe in the same values. Murder and
genocide are not condoned, nor do we want a repeat of what happened in WW2.
_Free speech_ is the protected value. That my countryman might choose to use
that freedom poorly is his choice, but that's part of it: he's _free_ to
choose. Unorthodox ideas might be the next freedom or civil rights movement,
or they might just be absolute garbage; it isn't the government's place to
pick or choose what ideas get expressed.

The old quote applies,

> _I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to
> say it._

That said, I don't see why a private enterprise should be forced to do
business with someone unwillingly. (Again, if this were the government, I'd
have a very different opinion.)

As for some of the more egregious things he's done, such as claiming Sandy
Hook was a hoax,

> _six families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting as
> well as an FBI agent who responded to the attack filed a defamation lawsuit
> against Jones for his role in spreading conspiracy theories about the
> shooting._

This is the proper forum for this to occur in, and hopefully justice will be
done.

------
mynameishere
This kind of thing is the one unquestionable good reason for having crypto
currencies available. They're not just for drugs and contracts!

Forget paypal. The oligopoly that is Visa and MasterCard could easily shut
down anyone they want because of "hate" or whatever abstract noun we're using
to attack those the NY Times doesn't like.

------
GW150914
I truly wish the predictable conversation to follow could be something other
than the inevitable bike shedding over what constitutes free speech, slippery
slopes, and conspiracy theories. In a dozen submissions of similar topics the
comments could be largely interchanged with only a few proper nouns being
changed. All too often it seems like people firing mortars from deep within
ideological trenches, and worse, some people making weak fallacious arguments
of doom instead of openly supporting the speech in question.

It’s all very twisty, predictable, and pointless and I’ve never seen anyone
budge. It’s just “over the top boys” and at the end of the day no man’s land
gets a few more craters.

~~~
tomp
Do you have a more substantial viewpoint to share?

I think to a large extent the same arguments are repeated because stories like
these are _literally_ arguments for both sides:

“See, I was right, censorship will not stop at at anything, it’s a slippery
slope!”

“See, bad people/ideas should be censored and it helps make society better.”

~~~
GW150914
My point is that it is pointless to have these conversations here, because no
exchange of ideas takes place, no intellectual curiosity is satisfied, and bad
faith arguments are the norm. You may not like that point, but that doesn’t
make it any less of a point. For whatever reason (I already presented my
thoughts on those reasons as I see them) this site can’t handle this
discussion, and the results are distracting and disheartening.

I suspect that a major reason I haven’t yet mentioned is that everyone who
isn’t identifying as being on a “side” stays the hell away from them. That
leaves the raving ideologues for the most part, with a smattering of the same
being shouted down for not hewing to what is Obviously Correct. My substantive
point is that the moderation on this site should treat this like any other
instance of politics that it buries, because it is, and because it creates the
same kinds of endless and repetitive arguments and flame wars.

------
avar
As much as Alex Jones says some indefensible things, this continuing saga is a
great argument for why we need to start regulating certain things on the
Internet like utilities.

Imagine Alex Jones's power company deciding to shut down power to his studio
because they (rightly) think he's being an asshole, or the phone company
disconnecting his landline.

Just because something's a private company doesn't mean we should put up with
them selectively denying people access to their "platform". Being plugged into
the power company is also being on their "platform", and would probably be
regulated as loosely as Facebook, YouTube, PayPal et al if electric power was
a thing that had only really taken off in the last 20 years.

------
patrickg_zill
I think that Monday I will be talking to the money transmission licensing
board in my state.

Maybe PayPal needs to explain to my state why they should retain the ability
to continue to operate...not sure that their one-sided values are in alignment
with the law.

EDIT: remember that if you tolerate this behavior towards people you disagree
with (I myself don't pay any attention to Jones as I think he is someone who
doesn't really try to understand reality), then when the tables are turned, as
they do quite often in politics, what basis will you have to complain about
the poor treatment you or someone whose views you champion, receives?

~~~
Mtinie
A commercial business is not allowed to pick and chose who it’s customers are?

I’m not picking sides in this discussion, only curious to understand your
viewpoint and to learn more about what legal boundary PayPal crossed.

~~~
bdcravens
There is an entire category of laws dedicated to discrimination by businesses,
yes. The question is here is whether Mr. Jones is part of a protected class,
and how broadly a company can use their terms of service (which is essentially
discrimination by policy)

