PayPal closes account of UK's Free Speech Union without explanation

https://lauradodsworth.substack.com/p/paypal-censors-free-speech-union

by ploppyploppy • 4 years ago

193 80 4 years ago

lauradodsworth.substack.com

LordDragonfang• 4 years ago

Dupe of the topic discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32923570

anigbrowl6• 4 years ago

Looks up FSU on Wikipedia

After Cambridge University launched an online portal for students to anonymously report microaggressions, the Free Speech Union threatened legal action. The portal was ultimately removed.[11]

I guess they consider some kinds of speech more free than others.

I found this article less than persuasive as it was clearly written to arouse rather than inform or supply context.

devwastaken• 4 years ago

Reporting of microagressions infers punishment by the university for speech. There's always balancing.

fennecfoxen2• 4 years ago

i would have you explain your sentence because it describes the concept of "reporting" as making an inference and i am no longer clear about how to interpret the words structurally

i tentatively take it to mean that you did the inference, and it's punishment by the university, but i am not sure, because the mechanism by which the university affects paypal is unclear

kevingadd2• 4 years ago

No, university policies produce punishment or non-punishment. Reporting is speech. Would you prefer that they report publicly and drag people into the court of public opinion without an investigation instead? Isn't that Cancel Culture?

anigbrowl6• 4 years ago

I think you mean 'implies' rather than 'infers'. I'm not a big fan of the 'microaggression' concept (which seems to be an analytical tool that's been prematurely operationalized), but it's not hard to conceive of a person in a position of academic or social authority who habitually dunks on some outgroup in such a way that its members are scared to complain openly.

I picked that example because I think it's notable that FSU didn't champion the idea of anonymous dissent and push for a more transparent but maximally inclusive solution; it seems they were OK with a particular kind of speech being shut down. Paypal's lack of transparency about why they're being rejected as customers is a bad thing, but then again Paypal is notorious for unilateralism and consumer hostility, as flea-market traders on eBay have long grumbled.

I might be more sympathetic if this were an org with a long and nuanced history of arguing for a general set of values like the EFF (with whom I don't agree on every topic, but whose independence and consistency are well established). However my first impression of the FSU is that it's a more partial organization than its branding suggests.

googlryas• 4 years ago

Sure, why not? Some speech can have chilling effects on other speech. It makes sense to prioritize the former over the latter.

etchalon• 4 years ago

So, whose speech are we prioritizing, and why?

anigbrowl6• 4 years ago

What if the latter speech is exerting a chilling effect, perhaps by design? Anonymous reporting can be gamed or exploited, but it can also be an outlet for those who are scared of speaking openly because they might incur retaliation.

BuyMyBitcoins2• 4 years ago

I don’t see this as some hypocritical indictment. I don’t think free speech organizations should be expected to treat all forms of speech equally and without qualification. Especially when we get to the point of actions, such as anonymously reporting people, being considered speech.

When I think of free speech the context is usually the freedom of discourse and the ability to say controversial things - rather than the demand for total and unrestricted liberty.

Dracophoenix• 4 years ago

Especially when we get to the point of actions, such as anonymously reporting people, being considered speech.

So are whistleblowers like Deep Throat ate people you believe shouldn't have right to report and publish material?

When I think of free speech the context is usually the freedom of discourse and the ability to say controversial things - rather than the demand for total and unrestricted liberty.

You have it backwards. Your pursuing permission not freedom. To have the freedom to speak of controversial subjects speech you must first have the freedom to speak. Freedoms are unrestricted by their very nature.

While I'm not very knowledgeable of English Law, Cambridge University (and every other university in England) receives taxpayer funding. If keeping free speech on campus is a condition for such funding, then this isn't censorship, but a contractual matter between Cambridge and the English courts that Free Speech Union would like to have observed and enforced.

z7• 4 years ago

The reference links to a Telegraph article quoting an explanation:

Toby Young, general secretary of the FSU, wrote to the vice-Chancellor claiming that the website and policy "proposed a system of policing speech and everyday interaction" which would be "inconsistent" with its duty to uphold free speech. He pointed out that section 43 of the Education Act 1986 requires universities to take reasonably practical steps to secure freedom of speech within the law for employees. "This policy, as you must be aware, would radically interfere with how your academics teach, argue with and learn from students, as well as how students interact with each other," Mr Young said. "It would mean academics and students were under constant threat of being reported and investigated for having committed some wholly innocent but perceived slight, which would inevitably have a chilling effect on interactions that, in a university, should be free and unguarded."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/24/cambridge-remove...

BrainVirus2• 4 years ago

I guess they consider some kinds of speech more free than others.

False equivalency. Setting up a snitch website has little to do with speech and everything to do with administrative action.

Clearly, many people here don't understand jack about why free speech is important. They just parrot that phrase when they feel it advances their pet ideology, literally not understanding what it means. They treat it as if it's just some clever construct made up by "the other side". This is how we get persistent false equivalency between communication and disrupting communication.

bitwize3• 4 years ago

Yes, and the FSU is parroting free speech when they feel it can help them advance right-wing ideology, including LGBTQ hate.

anigbrowl6• 4 years ago

That's quite a lot of loaded words, I hope you don't pull a muscle. Communication or disruption seems to depend very much on one's position in the communicative infrastructure; if efforts to challenge some prevailing orthodoxy are disproportionately penalized, then people are likely to seek other avenues.

Likewise, if people perceive themselves as significantly endangered by some forms of communication, they have an interest in disrupting it. One could counter that they should argue an alternative point of view, but this presupposes that all arguments are made and evaluated in good faith, and that all disputation is substantive in nature, without any use of rhetorical figures or exploitation of cognitive biases. As we know to our cost, this is often not the case.

ben_w3• 4 years ago

Without commenting on the merits or lack thereof in this case, I think it would be useful to give some more information about the FSU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Union

parker_mountain• 4 years ago

As a queer person, the second someone gets "cancelled" and starts yelling about pedophiles, it almost always means that they are anti-queer.

What a surprise that this crew seems very much in this boat.

I'm not issuing judgement on if paypal is in the right here or not (although my knee jerk reaction is that they are not), but the age-old "they're pedophiles" canard is well past dog-whistling and into trainwhistling at this point.

LAC-Tech• 4 years ago

What is this, a counter dog-whistle?

blipvert2• 4 years ago

I have yet to find an exception to your analysis.

ibeckermayer• 4 years ago

Sounds like a great organization standing up for the principle that forms the very foundation of civilization.

welshwelsh• 4 years ago

That's not what this is at all, they don't give a damn about free speech. This is just a bunch of conspiracy crazies trying to push their views and complaining when nobody wants to be associated with them.

Try writing your own article and submit it to their site. They won't publish it unless it's some right wing conspiracy bullshit. That's their right, of course: it's their platform and they get to choose what gets published, and anything they don't agree with gets "cancelled" for anyone who wants to use that moronic term.

But then they try to turn around and get their own crap published on other, more credible platforms, because otherwise nobody will read it. And of course, these platforms, such as universities and newspapers have a reputation to protect, so they aren't going to publish a bunch of nonsense.

seaourfreed• 4 years ago

GabPay.com is a competitor to PayPal. GabPay.com protects free speech.

rvz2• 4 years ago

Also AlignPay [0] is another alternative.

[0] https://alignpay.com/

encryptluks2• 4 years ago

Is GabPay associated with Gab, cause if so then no they don't. They blocked me for posting liberal viewpoints. They care about protecting right-wing racism and promoting domestic terrorism.

canistista3• 4 years ago

wikipedia is not a source

10g1k2• 4 years ago

PayPal has been blocking people, businesses, and organisations due to real or perceived ideological wrongthink for years. This is why more businesses are waking up and changing to Asian payment processors.

DaveExeter• 4 years ago

Asian payment processors? Can you recommend any?

seneca• 4 years ago

The major credit card companies are just as bad, if not worse. Payment processors are one of the major systems that need to be treated as a utility. They've become far too comfortable using their position to enforce ideology.

canistista3• 4 years ago

Hope anyone semi awake is hedging into crypto.

blipvert2• 4 years ago

The FSU/Daily Sceptic/Toby Young is conspiracy theoristic, grifting, scam.

He knows that he broke the T&Cs - learning to cry for fun and profit.

The sad thing is that TY’s dad coined the term “meritocracy” and he’s the only reason why anyone pays any attention to Toby.

whoooooo123• 4 years ago

What T&Cs did the FSU break?

XCabbage• 4 years ago

How did they break the Ts & Cs?

How have they ever scammed anyone?

These exact same talking points were all over Twitter, but with no more substantiation there than you've given here.

rvz2• 4 years ago

Which T&Cs did PayPal say they broke? Is that why being a skeptic and asking questions no matter what political bias / spectrum you're on gets you banned as well? [0] The same also done by the opposing side too? [1] So, due to Flipper having their funds seized by PayPal for no reason means that they are a scam despite successfully shipping their product? [2]

It seems that you being a PayPal apologist without having a clue yourself being able to mention what T&Cs all those examples broke, essentially proves my point as to how PayPal can do this arbitrarily to anyone for no reason and they don't care if your business or non-profit dies.

[0] https://twitter.com/llsceptics/status/1567658400573448192

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/21/paypal-shuts-acc...

[2] https://twitter.com/flipper_zero/status/1567194641610465281

boxmonster• 4 years ago

I think PayPal has been hacked and they don't know the extent of it yet and don't want to publicly comment. An intruder with an agenda could have closed those accounts. I say they've been hacked after I closed my account due to phishing attempts from their domain.

SturgeonsLaw• 4 years ago

PayPal is no longer deserving of the benefit of the doubt. This isn't the work of some shadowy hacker, this is their policy. They've been doing this shit for years. No due process, no way for victims to appeal. It's their long time MO.

I don't know why anyone would use PayPal knowing their history of user hostility. If you must use PayPal, then just use it for money transit and withdraw daily, but leaving funds on PayPal is just asking to lose them.

boomboomsubban• 4 years ago

Why would anyone remotely political trust PayPal after the 2010 Wikileaks closure?

uncletammy• 4 years ago

Paypal has been doing this crap for at least 15 years now. Anyone still using them at this point has it coming.

lizardactivist2• 4 years ago

Some of these cases seem like plain censorship. Other cases seem like something equivalent to the 10% rejection policy many US American insurance companies have, where they will flat out reject valid insurance claims just to raise the profit margins.

Personally I would never dare putting anything but spare change in the hands of Paypal or other US American payment providers.

jfghi• 4 years ago

I’m familiar with insurance practices but have never encountered a 10% policy.

I’d claim instead that there is error on the side of closing too much as contract language is rather clear and legal fees would likely exceed the value of smaller claims.

lizardactivist2• 4 years ago

It was a few years ago and I can't find the source anymore, but it was an interview with an ex. executive at one of the large insurance companies who literally quoted the 10% figure and policy.

It may be different or non-existant at other companies.

omg_ponies• 4 years ago

Is there a right to compel businesses to provide a service to you?

angrycontrarian• 4 years ago

If you belong to certain social groups with elevated legal privileges, yes.

dhruval2• 4 years ago

Tired of this argument.

There is certainly a right to discuss the social impact of a business’s practices.

And complain about unfair denial of services.

ergocoder3• 4 years ago

We are only tired of it when it doesn't work in our favor...

ben_w3• 4 years ago

Can be.

But what should be is not the same as what is.

While my personal opinion of the FSU's founder is so negative as to be unrepeatable in polite society, I regard certain categories of business (loosely speaking "infrastructure", but the boundary is vague even in my head) as being the kind of thing that must be available to everyone by default and only allowed to reject customers/users in very limited and well defined cases (think "court order" not "T&C says we can do it for any reason").

I regard the larger payment provision services, PayPal included, to be infrastructure.

d110af5ccf2• 4 years ago

Yes, in the US there is quite a bit of precedent for this. See for example common carriers.

ummonk• 4 years ago

Was this done at the same time that PayPal and Venmo shutdown the accounts of Gays Against Groomers?

OJFord• 4 years ago

Well they're keeping this UK citizen's account open without explanation, so the accountants are happy I suppose?

(An account I didn't knowingly consent to open. An account which they want more PII to close than they currently have (provided by me anyway) on file.)

ergocoder3• 4 years ago

When there's no explanation, it's almost always because of 2 reasons:

1. Sanctions.

2. Financial crimes. Think "funding terrorist-equivalent groups" or "money laundering". Now a terrorist-equivalent group is open to an interpretation by PayPal itself.. the same way we yell at facebook/twitter to be the decider of truth.

For these 2 reasons, employees are not allowed to notify the company what the reason is. Doing so would result in jail time for the employees. This rule is imposed by US government.

It's no surprise employees "overdo" the ban. Employees get paid the same whether they decide to ban a company or not. If they ban a company wrongly, big deal.. nothing happens (of course, unless they ban 100000 companies wrongly, but nobody would reach that number). If they make a mistake and don't ban a bad company, they (the employees themselves) could go to jail. Guess which side the employee would be biased toward.

mherdeg• 4 years ago

Young says:

I suspect it’s because it often publishes sceptical pieces about the five sacred nostrums you’re not allowed to dissent from: the view that sex, like gender, is a social construct and therefore not binary and immutable; that the lockdown policy and associated Covid restrictions were a prudent response to the pandemic; the mRNA vaccines are safe and efficacious; we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and the only solution is to achieve ‘net zero’ by 2050 (preferably earlier); and the West should continue to supply arms and aid to Ukraine.

How did these five things end up being part of the same tribe? How is it that, like, "don't take the Moderna vaccine" is on the same page as "stop helping Ukraine?"

genewitch2• 4 years ago

they all involve fairly large groups of people lambasting and berating people who don't subscribe to the same journals et ideas as one or more of them.

To be a bit hyperbolic, it's thought-crime - controlling narrative and therefore policies and ideas. I understand that there's roughly countably infinite information available from sources online and offline. Open discussion should be encouraged, and bad actors should be warned, given a timeout, or perma-banned, depending on the severity and incident count. It is possible that a lot of people are unable to cope with any exposure to dissent or hate (or "climate denial" or...)

mastodon/GNU Social et al have a lot of really disturbing imagery and outright harmful or hateful speech - i can only assume that people are giggling behind their screens and servers. I just maintain both an individual and domain blacklist, my fediverse server just won't accept connections from the domains, and i won't ever see replies/posts from individual blocks.

If i wanted to allow other people on to my fediverse instance, you bet i'd really ratchet down on the censorship, to ensure that new users aren't bombarded with the sorts of things discussed in both of the HN threads. The timeline does move quickly, though, and if i got booted off my hosting provider over something that appeared on one of my subdomains related to fediverse, i'd be fairly upset, too.

daoist_shaman• 4 years ago

The issue I have here is that a company is restricting access to the financial assets of another entity (which could just as easily be you or me) without any form of judicial oversight.

This is nightmarishly dystopian, since you and only you should have the final say on where your funds are parked and how they are used.

If anyone thinks this is normal or acceptable, they have been badly gaslit by the 1% who continue to leverage their power to parasitize the 99%.

WaitWaitWha• 4 years ago

Although the original article is tangential, my bigger concern is that there is no explanation why. I find it abhorrent to 'punish' someone without telling them why they are punished, even if it is a contractual agreement that is broken or enforced.

Some have noted that they broke the T&C, but as per this article we do not know this. We can conjecture, but there is little indication to this until PayPal confirms if and which T&C was broken. We have ample examples where accounts are suspended or closed without breaking T&C.

My other concern is the comments regarding 'private venues'. Indeed PayPal is, in general a private venue, but at what point does such a private venue become an agent of the (whichever) Government? We also have examples where essential resources to function in the cyber space were contacted by Government entities and suggested, cajoled, threatened, or outright told how to deny such resources to counter-Goverment entities.

And, for those who think 'good, the bad people are gone', I say yes, today your 'bad people' are gone. Tomorrow, when the Government flips (and it always does) to your 'wrong side', you are the 'bad people'. Suddenly 'you are' the one denied. Ample evidence to this in history.

bitwize3• 4 years ago

I find it abhorrent to 'punish' someone without telling them why they are punished, even if it is a contractual agreement that is broken or enforced.

When someone breaks the terms of service of a company, the company doesn't want to, and has the right not to, have to respond to sealioning from the offending party about which rule, down to the jot and tittle, was broken in what way, and whether that really counts as an infraction of the rule.

bitwize3• 4 years ago

Just like the Kiwi Farms thing -- if you foment hate, particularly hate against protected groups like LGBTQ -- that may be legal in your jurisdiction. But you still shouldn't expect legitimate businesses to continue doing business with you. This is how society works now. Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences, and it does not mean that businesses run by decent people have to brook the toxic slime you spread.

PayPal closes account of UK's Free Speech Union without explanation

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