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PayPal blocks donations to The Grayzone that mention Iran
- justinzollars 7y agoThe United States seized funds my supervisor sent to his friend who mentioned the word "ISIS" in a Venmo transaction. Be careful of your transaction messages.
- loeg 7y agoAnd maybe avoid banking services that are less culpable to their customers than even traditional banks? Paypal, venmo, etc are aggressively customer hostile even compared to the traditional banking sector.
- Jamwinner 7y agoYup. People look at me weird once in a while, but cash always works. No fees. Censorship resistant, close to anonymous, and accepted everywhere, network or not. I can do without yet another app selling my data.
- justinzollars 7y agoI love cash.
- loeg 7y agoCash is fine, too. But really I am just advocating for like, Credit Unions, or even traditional for-profit banks like Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, etc as places for storing your money rather than Paypal or Venmo. Zelle instead of Venmo for quick payments to friends. Credit cards or debit cards or whatever instead of Paypal anything.
- lucb1e 7y agoIt's almost as if we should be using end to end encryption so we can just speak our minds and make jokes without self censorship.
- wallace_f 7y ago>“To comply with government regulations, PayPal is required to review certain transactions.” For mentioning the word Iran. Terrifying. I guess the best to hope for is that the Institute for Justice or the ACLU pick this up and sue for their free speech rights. But even then, the only consequence would be taxpayers burdened to pay up.
- arachnids 7y agoCourts have been pretty clear that supporting terrorism is not protected speech under the first amendment (https://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2015/01/Vol.-2_Barak-Erez_and_Scharia_Final.pdf https://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2015/01/V...)
- loeg 7y agoThey were doing this long before last week. 2019: https://www.newsweek.com/venmo-flags-payments-persia-allows-nazis-1339871 https://www.newsweek.com/venmo-flags-payments-persia-allows-... 2016: https://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/venmo-reportedly-blocking-payments-that-use-the-word-persian.html https://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/venmo-reportedly-blocking-... 2014: http://valleywag.gawker.com/venmo-racial-profiling-account-frozen-for-typing-the-w-1646766081 http://valleywag.gawker.com/venmo-racial-profiling-account-f...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
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- r32a_ 7y agoUse Bitcoin, problem solved
- DarkWiiPlayer 7y agoFor as much flaws as bitcoin has, this kind of bullshit is the biggest reason why I hope it will ultimately become a more viable form of payment.
- sschueller 7y agoI would even use Dogecoin if it came down to it. :)
- lucb1e 7y agoDo try to use a cryptocurrency that does not depend on a pollutive proof of work.
- justwalt 7y agoWhat do you mean by “pollutive proof of work?” Are you talking about its environmental impact?
- zaarn 7y agoThe environmental impact of bitcoin is undeniable, either by polluting through using coal power or by using up renewable energies that could have been used more productively elsewhere.
- lawn 7y agoOf course Bitcoin's energy consumption isn't ideal, but you've got to realize something: Bitcoin mining is only profitable if you have access to very cheap energy. This is why there are so many miners in China that use hydroelectric power, because there's so much excess energy that wouldn't be used otherwise. Miners don't really use coal power or use up renewable energy that could be used elsewhere. That would be too expensive for them.
- sdan 7y agoSo Paypal is the Cloudflare for money?
- lucb1e 7y ago4-5 years ago, didn't they block Wikileaks on a whim? As for the specific issues you're raising about identity and fees, I'm having none of those issues, but then I also avoid PP whenever possible so I use it maybe once every other month.
- justinzollars 7y agoVerify who you are is mandated by the USA PATRIOT ACT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer
- loeg 7y agoPaypal has been exactly this awful for at least a decade, if not its entire existence.
- kick 7y agoHow to take payments without a chance of political censorship in 2019, stolen from The Ancient Wizards of Technology's Past: View the following. https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1093.pdf https://about.usps.com/forms/ps1093.pdf Follow the instructions to get a PO Box. To avoid mail containing harmful or annoying items, I recommend a small one. Put the mailing address of your PO Box on your website, and tell people sending cash to it to address it to "YOURSITE," possibly appending "Donation Fund" if applicable. Be careful to remind the reader that they need not put their real (or any) name on it, and that they can get stamps anonymously and location-randomized with ease if desired. This also works amazingly if you want to charge for hardware or hosting, especially hardware or hosting that's privacy-focused. Congratulations! Your readers/customers can send you money from almost anywhere without identifying themselves, and you can rest easy knowing that any dollars meant for you will reach you.
- chii 7y agoand also it's very easy for someone to steal said donation from the mail - may be even enroute!
- kick 7y agoIf sent through the USPS, that's incredibly unlikely.
- doesnt_know 7y ago> rest easy knowing that any dollars meant for you will reach you I feel like your faith in the postal services that cash may go through is misplaced.
- kick 7y agoMail fraud (FedEx/UPS aren't mail) gets you a felony, and as long as you send through USPS you should be more than fine.
- StanislavPetrov 7y ago
- yibg 7y agoSeems like just a dumb keyword match. At least make it more context sensitive or have a human review it first.
- loeg 7y agoFWIW, you would see reports of this kind of thing long before the recent violence. People would mention "persian rug" and get their accounts locked or transactions reversed. Super lazy embargo enforcement.
- DarkWiiPlayer 7y ago> Super lazy embargo enforcement. In a way I can understand that; if you just want to do your job and some politician decides now that "iranians = bad" and makes you responsible for restricting your transactions with them, you wouldn't be very motivated either. They probably just considered the costs and concluded that it'd be cheaper in the short term to block a few unrelated transactions than to implement a huge system to accurately filter out only the right transactions. This is no defense, but we already knew that big companies like paypal don't care to be "the good guys"
- duskwuff 7y agoWell, even simpler than that: the penalties for failing to block an actually-bad transaction are massive, potentially denominated in millions of dollars. The financial consequences of blocking a legitimate transaction are comparatively minor.
- DarkWiiPlayer 7y agoWhether it's in the from of government regulations or the free market deciding to prefer another service, society shouldn't be allowing this sort of behavior from large companies, but the sad truth is, many people don't care and most likely just rationalize it as "it doesn't affect me" or "It's just a few dollars".
- LiamPa 7y agoIran is on the FATF black list and features a lot in the OFAC sanctions lists, any transaction mentioning Iran is going to be blocked.
- duskwuff 7y agoNo idea why this is downvoted; it's the plain truth. The same thing goes for other sanctioned countries: (Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria), as well as for transactions mentioning sanctioned individuals or organizations.
- benwad 7y agoIs Cuba still sanctioned? I thought the main embargo was lifted a few years ago.
- duskwuff 7y agoCuba was removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list in 2015, but it remains under heavy economic sanctions and travel restrictions -- enough so that mentioning "Cuba" or "Havana" in an electronic payment memo will probably get your account locked temporarily while the compliance department takes a look at it.
- solarkraft 7y agoInteresting that that really seems to mean that you can't mention those countries in transaction messages. It seems insanely silly, but since it's US regulation I'm not at all surprised.
- LiamPa 7y agoYou can mention them but your transaction will be blocked until it is reviewed. The review process will depend on the FI in question with some not as efficient as others... The fines for breaking US sanctions are just to big to ignore so risk appetites tend to err on the side of caution.
- chvid 7y agoJust another reminder how powerful the US is and how extreme sanctions they have put on Iran.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mrb 7y agoThis sort of financial censorship is a textbook example of a problem perfectly solved by Bitcoin-class cryptocurrencies. A censorship-resistant digital currency may not be useful to you personally, but it's painfully obvious there are heaps of people who legitimately need them in our modern world for use cases that would never cross your mind.
- zaarn 7y agoBitcoin isn't censorship resistant when you want to pay out into real money. The exchanges can block it, especially if you're on one of the various "do not trade" lists.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mrb 7y agoYou don't get it. The full benefits of Bitcoin are realized when you stay in the system. Receive BTC. Spend BTC. Avoid converting to fiat ("real money") when possible. As adoption increases[1] year-over-year it becomes increasingly feasible to do that, to stay in the system. [1] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.html https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.ht...
- zaarn 7y agoAh, so where in Iran can I live only using Bitcoin and no paper money whatsoever?
- oska 7y agoNo part of this story happened in Iran. It was a US American sending money to a US American media website. > On January 3, a reader tried to make a donation of $10 to The Grayzone through PayPal. The small donor, a US citizen who lives in California, wrote the following message to accompany the donation: “Thanks for all your excellent work and especially the Gray Zone’s coverage of the murder of Soleimani and war with Iran. You fellows are so insightful and brilliant.”
- Glosster 7y agoMaybe a solution would be for people to use cryptocurrency for donations.
- rvz 7y agoWell done PayPal. You have just legitimised the use case for using cryptocurrencies as a way of sending money without being censored. What a spectacular own goal here.
- tuxt 7y agoSo stop using PayPal?
- SimonB_ 7y agoA solution for this kind of payment filtering is using a cryptocurrency like Nano. Unlike PayPal, it has no fees, and the transfer takes less time too. There are many other advantages that I won't go into.
- Timyjoe 7y agobad think
- ubinubi 7y agoNext time use pig latin for your message and uckfay aypalpay andway acebookfay
- ubinubi 7y agoNext time just use pig latin and uckfay aypalpay andway acebookfay
- Krasnol 7y agoAm I missing something or where is the screenshot of a mail saying anything about Iran?
- brendanfalk 7y agoThe US government is so strict on all transactions due to Anti Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing laws. This donation clearly meant well, but it’s totally understandable that PayPal blocked it given everything that has just happened in Iran. Yes, this clearly pushes people towards crypto, but PayPal is doing what the Government is mandating and is merely protecting itself.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoI believe that the Western sanctions against Iran mean that it is currently illegal for individuals to transfer money from USA et al to Iran. If so, it is quite obvious that Paypal and other financial institutions would take steps to prevent this from happening with their knowledge.
- duskwuff 7y agoCurrent events in Iran aren't a factor -- this is a sanctions issue and always has been. If you tried to make a Paypal donation mentioning Iran a month ago, that would have gotten blocked too.
- brendanfalk 7y agoAgree. Iran has been sanctioned for a long time, But PayPal would almost certainly would be overly cautious given recent events and maybe more edge cases are getting denied than a few months ago. Anyway, either way we clearly agree here
- cwyers 7y agoFor everyone in this thread mentioning Bitcoin/crypto: in no way does using cryptocurrency exempt you from US sanctions. Given the way most crypto exchanges are run, I wouldn't even think that it offers much protection against getting caught.
- ShorsHammer 7y agoOpen source, decentralised exchange, no registration required, all keys stored locally: https://bisq.network/ https://bisq.network/
- StanislavPetrov 7y agoIts not an issue of US Sanctions. Grayzone is a US publication owned and operated by Americans in the United States. Its a matter of circumnavigating Paypal's interference in their receiving donations. Nobody has suggested that any of this money came from Iran (where Paypal doesn't even operate). Use crypto would potentially be an effective way to donate to Grayzone without requiring Paypal's approval.
- ryanlol 7y ago>Given the way most crypto exchanges are run, I wouldn't even think that it offers much protection against getting caught. Ever heard of localbitcoins.com? Most exchangers require no KYC whatsoever.