Coinbase bans the accounts of Gab and its founder

https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1081255271429681153

42 29 8 years ago

benj1115• 8 years ago

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.

wakeywakeywakey• 8 years ago

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.

benj1115• 8 years ago

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 What happens if service was withdrawn because the user was black?

deogeo2• 8 years ago

Even with multiple services, they can have similar terms. E.g. sex workers have great difficulties finding payment processors, and nazis have a hard time finding web-hosts.

flyingfences• 8 years ago

Yes, they have the same right. Whether they ought to exercise that right is another question entirely.

Aqua• 8 years ago

Would you mind elaborating? Hearing about this service for the first time, why are Coinbase and appstores fighting it?

benj1115• 8 years ago

The Pittsburgh shooter posted there, that's what brought it to a head, plenty of other things though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)

egypturnash• 8 years ago

Gab is basically "Twitter for neo-nazis". In theory they go on about being defenders of free speech but their original logo was a reference to Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character the Internet far-right racist crowd appropriated as their mascot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)

bitxbitxbitcoin• 8 years ago

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

Traster• 8 years ago

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.

benj1115• 8 years ago

I havent seen anyone claiming it was 1. Although I don't visit gab, where most of those people probably are.

Having said that, who are all those companies regulated by?

I don't have a fully formed accusation here. All I know is that finance is heavily regulated. I suspect even the fear of regulators asking questions, and all the paperwork that would entail would be enough reason for some companies to cut their links.

javagram2• 8 years ago

Another commenter has already mentioned https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point which was a recent government attempt to block banking services to various legal activities such as gun dealers.

I suspect Gab isn’t related to something like that though. It’s more that media focus on Gab means each company they do business with will want to drop them as a PR hot potato, to avoid news articles saying “why is X still willing to work with Gab?”

sadris• 8 years ago

Gab has been rejected from 18 banks.

So closer to 1.

beatgammit2• 8 years ago

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/

ryanlol• 8 years ago

18 banks isn't a lot.

Why do people care so much about Gab, but not gambling sites which have been successfully dealing with far worse problems for years now?

beaner• 8 years ago

It's sort of in between, it's not as clear cut as you make it sound.

All of these processors ultimately depend on their banks, who are super strict. Banks are super strict because money is an insanely regulated industry. Banks are directed by regulators and lawmakers. They do not take any chances.

Services like these each somehow coincidentally (not really) come to the same conclusions because they're all trying to appease the same industry, directed by the same regulators. If they lose their banking relationships they are dead.

It's not a conspiracy and they're not really making individual decisions either, it's just how modern banking works.

Coinbase bans the accounts of Gab and its founder

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