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Gab.com banned from PayPal
- raverbashing 8y agoFinancial censorship is still censorship
- InfiniteBeing 8y agoIt's very troubling. In certain respects it's more troubling than speech censorship.
- pavel_lishin 8y agoOh no, I censored you by downvoting!
- kevinmgranger 8y agoCensorship by being killed is also censorship.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- zorpner 8y agoPaypal is not the government. Stop this absurd misrepresentation of censorship.
- WillPostForFood 8y agoStop the absurd misrepresentation that only the government censor.
- orf 8y agoWhen will society stop censoring my racist and xenophobic views! Free speech means everyone has to tolerate and accept what I'm saying!!1
- zorpner 8y agoThat is literally true. Paypal is choosing not to do business with someone. Is your preference that companies must be forced to conduct business with all comers?
- Khaine 8y agoFFS the government has already forced people to do business with those they don't like. You do remember the raison etre of the Civil Rights Act don't you? I'm pretty sure companies in the 1960s South didn't want to serve black Americans. In fact, many want the Government to go further and force bakers to make cakes for gay weddings when the owners don't support gay marriage [1] [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-05/court-sides-with-colorado-baker-on-same-sex-wedding-cake/9834790 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-05/court-sides-with-colo...
- zorpner 8y agoYou have completely failed to understand the jurisprudence surrounding the idea of a protected class.
- Khaine 8y agoThe fact that the Government created protected classes is the entire point. Government's already have forced businesses to do business with people. That is a fact. This argument has nothing to do with what is and isn't a protected class. What is a protected class could be expanded and the Government can force everyone to do business with unsavoury types.
- village-idiot 8y agoThe idea that “you seem unpleasant, I don’t want to do business with you” is censorship is absurd.
- vfclists 8y agoPayment processors are government licensed oligopolies and if private processors can deny service for no reason, then the goverment should set up its own with a universal service obligation. If making and receiving payments is considered a necessary utility posting and handling large amounts of cash is restricted, then providers should not have a right to deny service to customers who are not taking payments in violation of the law, regardless of distasteful their activities may be. Would you agree if the state sided with electrical or water utilities to be able to refuse service to a customer such as brothel, on the grounds that their activitites where distasteful and immoral, not matter how legal? That would be fine if the person denied service had the right to connect to a river or a well, lay down their own pipes and power and draw their water and electricity directly, but those rights are curtailed by the state, and it requires certain permissions and rights to do those. The same can be said of online payments and credit card payments. They have become a necessary utility so much so that brothels and panhandlers have credit card machines. If private providers can deny such service arbitrarily then the state must become the providers of last resort.
- zorpner 8y agoThis is exactly the fight you should be having -- the government should be a universal payment processor. I agree wholeheartedly. I am arguing again the people who state that a corporation should be obligated to serve a non-protected class. if private processors can deny service for no reason Ah yes, the "no reason" of being violence-inciting Nazis. What a reasonless judgement.
- vfclists 8y agoYes Paypal denied service for no reason, or more explicitly, no stated reason. Do you see a reason stated in the termination notice?
- vfclists 8y agoIf you agree that the government should be a universal payment processor, then you must agree that the government should set itself as a universal payment processor "first", before granting the oligopolies they have licensed the right to deny service for no legal reason.
- bhtru 8y agoIs it censorship when it's between two private entities?
- WillPostForFood 8y agoIt is. Censorship is not solely a government action. We have concepts everyone should be familiar with like self-censorship that don’t involve the government.
- Waterluvian 8y agoThis sounds like an argument that can only be made if one believes that they're incapable of competing without PayPal's involvement. It sounds like a meek whine that they deserve special protections that force other companies to work with them. If PayPal is such an overwhelming giant of a service that you genuinely believe it needs to be forced to do business with certain corporations, then maybe it should be made into some sort of regulated service.
- raverbashing 8y agoThanks for responding with arguments instead of downvoting While there are other services, the popularity of PayPal makes it an important player Maybe because of that it should be more careful in who they reject
- shameful_idiot 8y agoDamn what a great hill to die on dude
- InclinedPlane 8y agoDeciding not to provide a platform for any particular view is not censorship. Also, hate speech specifically calling for violence is not protected speech.
- commandlinefan 8y agoActually yes, that is censorship, by definition. It may not be illegal censorship, but it’s still censorship.
- icebraining 8y ago> hate speech specifically calling for violence is not protected speech. Yes, it is, for the most part. Per Brandenburg v. Ohio, "The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
- panarky 8y agoDoes it require the slaughter of innocents to decide not to support hate?
- atomical 8y agoIt shouldn't. You could easily say that of Sergei Brin, Sundar Pichai, and Jeff Bezos. https://www.google.com/search?biw=1280&bih=619&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=btXUW5SMJK7ajgTlhLFI&q=MBS+jeff+bezos&oq=MBS+jeff+bezos https://www.google.com/search?biw=1280&bih=619&tbm=isch&sa=1... Look at what a great time Bezos is having with MBS. Aside from executing homosexuals and oppressing women he must be a really great guy.
- village-idiot 8y agoBezos is doing a great job of destroying his public image.
- atomical 8y agoThey are already on the crypto bandwagon but I can see how this would make it more difficult for users.
- kingvash 8y agoI find it a little humorous that they posted this to twitter
- acoyfellow 8y agoBreaking: Gab Upset by the same treatment they promise in their legal terms: "Termination We may terminate your access to and use of the Services, at our sole discretion, at any time and without notice to you." [1] 1- https://gab.com/about/tos https://gab.com/about/tos
- Meekro 8y agoMost companies have something in their ToS to the effect of "we can do whatever we want" -- that doesn't mean they're all the same. For example, Stripe and PayPal both have essentially the same ToS. But only PayPal has so many "banned for no reason" horror stories that there are multiple websites dedicated to cataloging them.
- yzmtf2008 8y agoDon’t conflate this story with “banned for no reason”. There are plenty of reasons to ban Gab.
- dev_dull 8y agoAre they doing anything illegal?
- VectorLock 8y agoDo they have to be?
- millzlane 8y agoYou don't have to do anyting illegal for me not to want to conduct business with you.
- FreeSpeechlover 8y agoPaypal generally doesn't pull out of business unless its illegal. It was a bad move by paypal because 800000 gab users who did nothing wrong are now inconvenienced
- rurounijones 8y agoCan someone provide background context for gab.com?
- wgerard 8y agoTwitter : Gab :: Reddit : Voat
- krapp 8y agoA "free speech social network" used by white supremacists, neo-nazis and other extremists who have been banned elsewhere from social media (among others - I know people will be triggered if I don't explicitly disambiguate that not all Gab users are extremists and racists) and recently by the suspected Pittsburgh synagogue shooter.
- jsheard 8y agoIt's ostensibly the "free speech" version of Twitter, in practice it mostly caters to the far-right. The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter was a user: https://archive.fo/k63LE https://archive.fo/k63LE His profile has now been nuked by Gab, but only to save face after the shooting. They would usually pride themselves in not removing that kind of content.
- tptacek 8y agoIt's worth noting that in its heyday --- usage on Gab appears to have plummeted, at least measured by the front page, and seems to be dominated today by bots --- the content on that page was absolutely par for the course for the front page of the site. There was even a House candidate, Paul Nehlen, who campaigned using almost identical anti-Semitic rhetoric on Gab. You wouldn't want to leave anyone the impression that this kind of stuff was somehow buried on individual user pages on Gab. Rather, it is the raison d'etre for the whole site.
- commandlinefan 8y agoI’ve noticed that uncensored discussion boards tend toward right-leaning, whereas moderated ones always end up tending left-leaning.
- colemickens 8y agoI am sort of assuming this is related to this article? https://www.businessinsider.com/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-gab-2018-10?utm_source=reddit.com https://www.businessinsider.com/pittsburgh-synagogue-shootin... Is Twitter, who also gave him a forum and declined to censor or punish him for threatening tweets, being similarly affected?
- kevingadd 8y agoTwitter doesn't use PayPal to process payments, does it?
- colemickens 8y agoI assume not, but I figure someone does payment processing for them that an upset crowd could apply pressure to? I guess I was generally curious if people thought there'd be any sort of similar repercussion(s) toward Twitter though. I finally got off Twitter a couple months ago and can still imagine a likely "outrage bubble" yesterday about their handling of that account, but with little actual impactful change in user usage of the service, etc. (In fact, if anything, "major" events like this likely drive a lot of traffic, even if there's criticisms.) (Please note, I'm explicitly not commenting on whether or not I think the criticism/handling/etc is appropriate or justified.)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sjg007 8y agoI'd assume they'd use square.
- dgzl 8y agoWas Gab actively supporting the hateful groups more than just giving them a speech platform? Because if not, this is truly terrifying. It seems like the "left" (whatever that means), with waves of ignorant support, is turning into the monster it thinks it's fighting against.
- threeseed 8y agoYou just seem like a parody right now. (a) Why did you turn this into a left/right issue ? (b) How is Paypal left ? (c) Since when is the left the only one responsible for censorship or ToS enforcement. Because many examples exist today where centrists and the right do this as well.
- jesssse 8y agoWeb platforms are censoring right wing conservatives. Which web platforms are censoring the left?
- tptacek 8y agoThese aren't "conservatives". Conservatives aren't racists and anti-Semites.
- nkurz 8y agoI'm not exactly a conservative, but I sincerely appreciate that you continue to make this distinction. Thanks!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- detaro 8y agoI regularly see complaints about Twitter suspending people from the left.
- orf 8y agoIs there a difference?
- fjsolwmv 8y agoAtripe froze gab a few weeks ago, and PayPal put gab on notice for allowing a post with the Navy Seal copypasta aimed at the PayPal CEO. https://gizmodo.com/stripe-freezes-gabs-account-for-nsfw-content-shining-a-1829503062 https://gizmodo.com/stripe-freezes-gabs-account-for-nsfw-con...
- fzeroracer 8y agoIt should honestly come as no surprise considering Gab, much like Voat, is a website filled with some of the most vitriolic and racist garbage I've ever seen. No company wants to be associated with a walking PR disaster. Most of the time however they're more than happy to take money from said places as long as people don't make it into a big PR problem.
- ben_jones 8y agoAs bad is voat is I've seen that aspect of humanity on Youtube, Facebook, the comment section of most major news sites, the live chat of twitch, etc.
- bgilroy26 8y agoHistorically, voat and gab were set up because its users disapproved of the moderation on reddit and twitter. That differentiates the cultures on voat and gab from their predecessors.
- tptacek 8y agoThat is an extraordinarily charitable way to describe the genesis of Gab, which actually has roots in a YC batch (that its founder, Andrew Torba, was kicked out of).
- tomjakubowski 8y agoCould you say more about the Gab-YC connection?
- tptacek 8y agoTorba had an unrelated YC startup during the batch that was running during the 2016 election season. He was ejected from YC for harassing batch-mates; there's an HN thread about it you can find in the search bar. He started Gab at just about the same time as he was kicked out of YC.
- Asparagirl 8y agoGood. Now for Stripe. I already called their customer support this morning and told them I'd pull my organization's account unless they dropped Gab. I'm sure I'm not the only customer who has. They enable payments processing for Gab, which means that they also profit from Gab. They make money off the alt-right. They choose to make money off the alt-right. You want protests in front of your office, Stripe, raising hell about the blood money you take? We can surely arrange that. For every TechBro being oh-so-concerned about "financial censorship, oh noes!": you ain't seen nothing yet. not doing business with white supremacist profiteers > nice API and documentation
- nkkollaw 8y agoI assume from your pissed-off tone and what you say that you are a some sort of leftist wanna-be activist. Aren't you guys for free speech and minorities? Stopping alt-right (a minority) exercising their right to free speech doesn't seem like a good cause to pursue. It's getting so annoying how leftists want to silence anyone that doesn't agree with them. This is part of the reason why people are abandoning your ideology in droves, at least in Europe. Haven't you become the very thing you think you're fighting, or am I missing something?
- tptacek 8y agoDoes Stripe still process payments for Gab?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Asparagirl 8y agoApparently yes, based on several conversations with/from some of their leadership on Twitter today. Stripe did suspend them earlier this month, but that seems to have been temporary.
- Meekro 8y agoI notice your organization (reclaimtherecords.org from your profile) uses Cloudflare, which also serves Gab. Are you going to threaten to leave them, too?
- zarriak 8y agoI appreciate that fact that you can tell this is all just a front for beliefs they don't have. I mean if they really believe in free speech you would assume they would have mentioned Julian Assange or Wikileaks once. It would have made a lot more sense if they had ever mentioned how dangerous the censorship of Wikileaks by monetary means was. Fortunately they never did this so you can reasonably assume it is a front.
- krapp 8y agoMost people who believe in free speech only believe in freedom for their speech. That's just the way people are. Extremists cry foul that their free speech rights are being violated or that they're being censored but within their own groups they would quickly stamp out opposing ideas or criticism.
- mikeash 8y agoThey do this because they see words as weapons to be used against their enemies, nothing more. It’s not that they believe in freedom of speech incompletely. They just know that freedom of speech is something other people care about, and it can be used as a rhetorical weapon. “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
- meowface 8y agoI don't understand what you're trying to claim. Are you suggesting the owners of Gab are anti-Semitic?
- stickfigure 8y agoI don't really have a take on gab.com (never heard of it until now) but a couple years ago I was processing thousands of transactions per day with PayPal. Their technology is awful and (from outside observation) their engineering teams are incompetent. In a business where "the hard technical problem" is how to stop fraud while allowing legitimate transactions to occur, you'd expect bad engineering to mean that the fraudsters win and the whole thing blows up. But what seems to have happened is that they've simply overcompensated on the other side. It's easy to stop fraud if you just flag everything as fraud. You end up with pissed off annoyed users, but you don't go bankrupt. It's too bad. I really wish PayPal was a vibrant alternative to Visa & Mastercard; they fundamentally have the trust model right. It's just that they've been failing at execution for decades now and even with the braintree acquisition it looks like they're dead in the water, milking the last of their fading reputation. Stripe is really the class act here, but they're playing a very conservative game. I wish they "owned" the payment process more instead of just being a front for credit cards. Maybe someday.
- dmartinez 8y agoInteresting thoughts. It could be that PayPal has over extended certain models for far longer than they should have. Some forms of tech debt should be resolved sooner, rather than later. It would be fascinating to know the real reasons behind the fall from grace. Is it really the employees, or the managers? There could be dilapidated business processes still in place that even prevent the company from healing itself. An interesting take on this is the book How The Mighty Fall. Some relevant things to know might be if they have restructured a lot, and what their churn has looked like both in the executive suite and in engineering.
- stickfigure 8y agoIt's hard to be certain from the outside, but my impression is: - Fractured product line; they have a bunch of products that are similar but different and they themselves are confused about which is which. Product management is in chaos. - Tech debt from the 90s that has never been paid off. - Acquisitions that were poorly integrated. - Some weird attempt to mash their platform together with ebay that never quite fully baked, then more debt incurred hastily ripping them apart again. - Some attempts at outsourcing development overseas? Can't be certain about this, just an impression. - A major attempt to rewrite their API, but instead of simplifying they got an architecture astronaut to design it. He wrote a lot of annoying blog entries about HATEOAS but AFAICT no longer works at the company. The modern API was published but it's broken and crippled in so many different ways that they would be better off putting a big "DO NOT USE" at the top of their documentation. - They've effectively abandoned the new API and apparently are relying on a sort of reverse-takeover from Braintree to save them. Maybe there is progress but it's been a while and I don't see any.
- radicalbyte 8y agoWhat is Gab? Some knock-off clothing brand? Their website returns a blank page unless - I assume - you enable external scripts (which ain't happening).
- VectorLock 8y agoAlt-right Twitter knockoff according to some other commenters.
- Ice_cream_suit 8y agoGab has been described as Reddit for Racists. A quick glance at Gab seems to show a large number of hate groups. Perhaps PayPal simply do not want the fallout that might ensue from that association. Google has already removed the Gab app for violating their hate group policy. Apple and Twitter have also removed them.
- orf 8y agoIt's funny how those who cry hardest about being censored, when given a completely free space to express themselves, fill it to the brim with xenophobia, racism, fake news and outlandish conspiracy theories involving the Clintons https://gab.com/popular https://gab.com/popular
- Mountain_Skies 8y agoOnly in this particular cultural context. In the context of the Arab Spring such a platform would have very different content. What does seem to be the case is that every time someone attempts to deplatform the people writing about the subjects you listed, their audience grows instead of shrinks. What is the ultimate goal here because it seems like the deplatforming movement is spreading the ideas they oppose much further than these people ever could have on their own. Is there a belief that we'll eventually reach a point where every single platform accessible to humanity is closed to those with ideas that we find unsavory? If not, then all of this seems to be causing much more harm than good as each attempt to silence them turns into a megaphone.
- orf 8y agoTheir audience doesn't grow because of this, it gets funneled into places like this where their true colours are on total display. Nobody gets converted to a xenophobic racist because they hear PayPal banned some crappy site That being said, this kind of stuff is growing, but it's not because of some hand wavey "deplatforming" issue. It's because wages are stagnating people are being locked out of a future they want. Then some very powerful voices, often those benefiting from this very thing, turn around and tell them it's because of the Jews or the Mexicans or some other minority. But that won't stop because it doesn't make economic sense. And you can't tell anyone this because your platform is built on it. So you have to keep spreading this toxicity and division even though it's killing the country. Because it's good for your side. Then you combine this with the deep rooted racial issues that have been swept under the rug for the last 60 years with the current social changes plua external countries that would profit from division in America, and oh boy, you've got yourself some strong punch. You're watching America eat itself in real time on platforms like this.
- Ice_cream_suit 8y agoThe anti-Semitic mass murderer who killed eleven people at the Pittsburgh synagogue today was a Gab user.
- nisuni 8y agoWas he a Facebook user? Comcast customer? Did you use US Post? Maybe he used to drive a Ford... Should all of these businesses close?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- atomical 8y agoTo be fair Sam Altman violates the guidelines. > I am suspending my involvement with the NEOM advisory board until the facts regarding Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance are known. This is well out of my area of expertise, so I don’t plan to comment on the case until the investigation is finished. I remain a huge believer in the importance of building smart cities. He decided to step back because a heterosexual male was murdered. How about the discrimination against LGBT and women in Saudi Arabia? I guess the money is just too good to turn down. Nothing like a good photo op with a dictator that murders gays. https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-OY406_UBERSA_P_20160717142450.jpg https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-OY406_UBERSA_P...
- tptacek 8y agoNone of this has anything to do with what I'm talking about. I think everyone doing business with Saudi Arabia has blood on their hands. I'm not interested in litigating the point further.
- atomical 8y agoIt sure does since Sam Altman is grandstanding in the thread posted. Don't litigate it further. Why would I care? Edit: I thought you were done?
- tptacek 8y agoSam Altman is the CEO of YC. I said that YC kicked out Andrew Torba for harassing batchmates. And lo, there's the CEO of YC, on a Hacker News thread, saying he kicked out Andrew Torba for harassing batchmates. There's probably nothing more to be said about it here.
- village-idiot 8y agoDownvote for whataboutism.
- atomical 8y ago