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PayPal Demonetises the Daily Sceptic

• accnumnplus1 4y ago
  I'm no longer sitting around waiting to get bitten by these rogue companies. My Paypal account will be closed today.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• AnnoyedComment 4y ago
• TotoHorner 4y ago
  > Oh, and by the way, it would be keeping the money in that account for up to 180 days while it decided whether it was entitled to “damages” for my yet-to-be-explained breach of its Acceptable Use Policy. This is so unbelievably unacceptable and yet I’ve seen PayPal do it time and time again.
  • twawaaay 4y ago
    At least PayPal is making a show of deciding. YouTube will demonetise your vid and pretend keeping running ads for free is not a problem.
    • AnonCoward42 4y ago
      Isn't your balance gone when PayPal cancels your account? Also what's with people having recurring payments to the cancelled PayPal account? Honest questions.
      • throwaway837562 4y ago
        In our case, yes. Our balance of around $4k was frozen for 180 days then PayPal said they will keep it all due to "damages", which they did not specify. Subscriptions will fail to be renewed.
      • twawaaay 4y ago
        IDK. "Normal" financial institutions like banks have obligation to send the balance to the account of your choosing upon closing the account unless it is frozen. But the money can only be frozen for a specific reason and the bank has no ability to claim those money for themselves. There is a good chance we will get a resolution because there is a potential class action brewing: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-13/paypal-sued-for-freezing-customer-accounts-without-explanation https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-13/paypal-su...
  • conradfr 4y ago
    It's mostly to account for potential chargebacks and fraud reversals. They have always done it, and it has always infuriated people affected by it.
    • TotoHorner 4y ago
      Makes sense for potential chargebacks / fraud reversals... but PayPal is saying they're terminating the Daily Sceptic's account for political reasons. Why would there be a flood of chargebacks for a termination like that? It seems like PayPal doesn't have a very strong policy in place for how/why they freeze someone's account and take their money. They just do it willy-nilly whenever they want to close someone's account.
  • blantonl 4y ago
    Terms and Conditions that you agree to before using a service are a thing.
    • twawaaay 4y ago
      The contract you sign is not absolutely binding and can be invalidated in part or in whole for variety of reasons. I personally feel that if ToS is too long and too complex for most people to read and understand it should be possible argument towards invalidating that ToS.
    • TotoHorner 4y ago
      Contract law is a thing. Contracts are deemed void and unenforceable for all manner of reasons.
• jackmott 4y ago
• rat_1234 4y ago
  Say what you will about whether or not a private company like Paypal should have the ability to do this. What clearly is true based on this example is that if we ever gave this power to the government they would use it and use it in a dangerous way.
  • xqcgrek2 4y ago
    Who knows, like Twitter, government officials are not sitting in the same Slack channel as Paypal employees?
  • loudmax 4y ago
    So, these decisions ought to be entrusted to an entity whose responsibilities are to its shareholders rather than elected representatives of the general population?
    • suoduandao2 4y ago
      honestly, amorality seems less scary than self-righteousness to me at this point in history.
      • jeltz 4y ago
        If you live in western Europe that is a point in favor of the government. Compared to the self rightousness of private companies the government are amoral buteacrats just following the regulations. Sure, there is some personal selrightousness but nowhere close to the levels at American tech companies.
        • suoduandao2 4y ago
          >If you live in western Europe that is a point in favor of the government. Maybe if history started in 1947 it would. Righteousness tends to do much better at the ballot box than the stock market. And self-righteous as American tech is for advertising purposes, I'd still say it has an order of magnitude more self-awareness than American politics for advertising purposes.
• henearkr 4y ago
  The Daily Sceptic is such a piece of shit, I try very hard to feel sad but I can't. I know that it's a question of big principles etc... but still.
  • greggeter 4y ago
  • Udo 4y ago
    True. There is a real argument to be made here that this site is actively causing harm. Payment providers, especially credit card companies, have banned sites and services for far less, for example because they decided porn was incompatible with their public image. But this illustrates the dilemma quite well: ideally we would like payment providers to be a public utility that is not allowed to make whimsical judgement calls, on the other hand we would like them to employ good judgement about facilitating things that are clearly detrimental. While I share your schadenfreude in this case, I don't see how this is solvable in the general case.
    • iinnPP 4y ago
      I went through 10 articles and 100 headings and can't find an example of this. What day was the harm posted?
      • Udo 4y ago
        Just from the sidebar: The Growing Menace of Bill Gates’ ‘Global Health’ Whale Population Grows Despite Attenborough Climate Scaremongering Headmistress of England’s Most Successful State School Reported to Police For ‘Hate Crime’ After Jordan Peterson Visit Pentagon Launches Probe into Woke Diversity Officer After her Tweets Asking Where She Can “Get a Break From White Nonsense for a While” Woke High School Defends Trans Teacher With Prosthetic Breasts in Name of Creating “Safe and Inclusive Environment” It seems to be a Q-adjacent site with a clear goal of disinformation and culture war bullshit.
        • 4y ago
• jokethrowaway 4y ago
  What a surprise, more big tech censoring speech they don't like. We need better unregulated money transfer services
  • ekianjo 4y ago
    coming to the banks you use pretty soon
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • actually_a_dog 4y ago
    > unregulated money transfer services I'm not gonna go so far as to leave a "username checks out" comment on HN, but are you joking/trolling, or just completely insane? Money transfer services are regulated for a reason, and that is to protect consumers from outright fraud and blatant fleecing. Why would you think "unregulated money transfer services" would be any better than regulated ones? I don't see any problem they're not solving currently that having a "freer" market would solve; in fact, quite the opposite seems to be the case.
    • suoduandao2 4y ago
      antifragility. Regulation through a central authority can only make big mistakes, the harder it clamps down to avoid smaller mistakes, the bigger the mistakes that eventually get made. Much harder to learn when you have full control, etc.
  • manuelmoreale 4y ago
    If anything you need MORE regulation. To prevent services to impose their arbitrary rules via TOS.
• desindol 4y ago
  Why do you have to write an important article like a 6th grade schoolpaper… demonetized is also a rather manipulative wording. They might be right in principle but how they go about conducting it… I am no fan it made me rather the opposite.
• moreira 4y ago
  I understand that companies want to avoid getting into legal complications over it, and that's why I think there should be some sort of legislation in place to force companies to explain decisions like this. This is becoming more and more important with time. Something like: If you end your contract with someone because you think that they were in violation of the terms, you have to clearly list what your reasoning is for it, with no tolerance for black box answers. DMCA takedown requests include the list of offending URLs. This should be made similar. "We terminated our contract because this, this, and this signal, make us think that you're in violation of its terms". You can then appeal, and obviously if the two parties can't come to an agreement by themselves, you can at least use the legal system. Otherwise, we're living in a world where contracts between two parties mean nothing. Anyone can pull out of anything at any time for any reason, with no notice.
  • blantonl 4y ago
    Otherwise, we're living in a world where contracts between two parties mean nothing. Anyone can pull out of anything at any time for any reason, with no notice. Not if the contract stipulates that both parties must agree to unwind the relationship. We already live in a world where anyone can pull out of anything at any time for any reason, with no notice - however if the contract says you can't do that then you open yourself up to legal liability. That doesn't stop most folks.
  • alldayeveryday 4y ago
    The problem there is that the terms are often ambiguous, and thus an explanation of how the terms were violated will be ambiguous. "Some sort of legislation ... to force companies to explain decisions ..." will be useless unless the terms are unambiguous. Look for example at youtube where there is a lot of subjective wiggle room in their definition of acceptable content. Let's face it, the decisions of Paypal and others (Youtube, Twitter, etc) when deciding who stays and who goes on its platform are ideologically and politically motivated. The leaders of these companies are basing their decisions on their own political leanings. And in the vast majority of cases like the Daily Sceptic where a user or service is being deplatformed, the reason is idealogical (rather than a case where the user is for example defrauding the platform or service provider). I believe a better solution would be for the government to penalize companies that are repressive to the rights granted to us in the bill of rights (for example free speech). This whole "but it is a private company who gets to dictate what speech they want and don't want on their site" needs to go out the window. If a company wants to operate within the US, it needs to respect the rights of the country's population (rather than define its own set of rights).
• Reason077 4y ago
  Considering they're called "The Daily Sceptic", I'm surprised they weren't more sceptical about using PayPal in the first place.
• caiomassan 4y ago
  start accepting crypto donations. problem solved.
  • deweller 4y ago
    While I agree with this in principal, it is still not practical. Crypto is still too clunky to be used by many potential donors. A site would take a heavy hit to their income by only allowing crypto donations.
    • k__ 4y ago
      That might be true, but it also moves the problem into another domain. If nobody can force the hand of payment service, they aren't to blame anymore.
  • Gigachad 4y ago
    The problems go further than that. Kiwi farms has had their cdn, hosting provider, domain name, owners personal phone number, post box, and legal team cancel them all within a week. Once big corporate decides to act against you, it’s basically impossible to continue existing.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• nuklearwanze 4y ago
  The thing about free speech is, that you are not entitled to be agreed with. And it seems, paypal really doesn't agree with the rhetoric on the daily sceptic - just at a glance this looks to be completely understandable. If, as a private company, paypal doesn't want to be associated with a website that thrives on misinformation and fearmongering, you can't really be surprised - that's just bad for business. I completely get the argument, that free speech shall not be limited by anyone. But as a society we have to decide if free speech should also cover blatant lies and deliberate misinformation. just as a free society should fight any movement that wants to limit the freedoms of others, sews hate or doesn't follow the principles of a free society, free speech advocates should probably fight against peddlers of misinformation. It's not all black and white, not all or nothing with this one... we can have nuance in this debate.
  • nxmnxm99 4y ago
    Who exactly decides what misinformation is? Remember when Twitter started banning people for discussing the lab leak theory, which turned out to be true?
    • themitigating 4y ago
      The lab leak theory has not been proven nor is there any evidence
    • CrazyStat 4y ago
      > Remember when Twitter started banning people for discussing the lab leak theory, which turned out to be true? The lab leak theory hasn't turned out to be true, so no.
    • heartbreak 4y ago
      > which turned out to be true? Now that’s a bold claim.
  • AdrianB1 4y ago
    By your own logic, Paypal may decide not to be associated with anyone based on any random criteria, including opinions, race, sex, age etc. It can be black and white, of course, just not today.
• LinuxBender 4y ago
  This behavior is causing new companies to get spawned as a response to fill the void created by censorship. A recent one mentioned by a Youtuber is Parallel Economy [1]. I have no idea how good/bad they are but I expect more of these to start popping up. I am curious how people will vet these new alternatives to PayPal. PayPal for its good and bad at least have a known history and a myriad of discussion about the known behavior. Will people have a way to rate the alternatives, like a Dun & Bradstreet credit score or something like Yelp? How are people validating the behavior and reputation of these businesses? [1] - https://www.paralleleconomy.com/about/ https://www.paralleleconomy.com/about/
• boole1854 4y ago
  Protip: they should file a Notice of Dispute (https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/pp-notice-dispute https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/pp-notice-dispute). This will bypass the usual customer support chain of command and go straight to PayPal's legal department. While this does not guarantee a more reasonable response, it does mean your case will be scrutinized more heavily by an actual human and is more likely to lead to at least getting an explanation. It is also a required prerequisite before for proceeding further to third-party arbitration.
• SilverBirch 4y ago
  >I suspect what’s really going on is that someone at PayPal – possibly the entire C-suite – doesn’t like what the Daily Sceptic or the Free Speech Union stands for. I absolutely guarantee that there isn't a single person in the Paypal C-suite who knows who Toby Young or Daily Sceptic is.
  • jaywalk 4y ago
    So what? He didn't claim that they personally targeted him.
    • SilverBirch 4y ago
      It's an absolutely asinine thing to assert. That the entire C-suite of Paypal disagrees with him, and implying that they're shutting his account because of that. Not only is there no evidence of that, it's a laughable claim. The entire C-suite of Paypal don't know anything about his views, let alone have an opinion about banning him.
      • origin_path 4y ago
        As jaywalk has pointed out, he isn't saying they disagree with him. They disagree with what he and the FSU stands for, i.e. the underlying principles and positions. Not that the FSU really has many positions beyond free speech being good - they defend people on both sides of the political spectrum which is why it's hard to figure out what PayPal are upset about here.
        • SilverBirch 4y ago
          It doesn't matter whether you're saying they disagree with him or disagree with what the organization he runs stands for. It's an equally absurd claim, because he has no idea what they believe.
          • origin_path 4y ago
            He has irrefutable information about what they believe - he knows that either the words published on his site, or the legal defences mounted by the FSU, or both, have upset PayPal's beliefs significantly enough to result in account termination.
• anonymous344 4y ago
  Just few days ago in that site was article telling some negative points about Gates and WHO. That what happens. Speak wrongly about big pharma, alphabet, Nestle or WHO, you will get cancelled. Why ? Because it's all the same Black Rock. I think I understand gates about this needing to decrease the world population. After he made so much money he travelled with hes wife and contributed huge amounts of money and energy into the poor countries... then I think what happened was that he saw that helping he actually made things worse because there were just millions of more people killing animals, destroying the planet and making more babies and needing more food & medical aid. Now he wants to cancel this.. because human is the worst being in this rock and causes more harm than anything else.
  • ithkuil 4y ago
    I think we can both have less people and help people who currently suffer. I don't see those two things as being incompatible
  • lioeters 4y ago
    > human is the worst being in this rock I recently learned that this view is called "misanthropy" or "misanthropism". It's related to philosophical pessimism and antinatalism (that people should not be born). I suppose it also supports population control. > Misanthropy involves a negative evaluative attitude towards humanity that is based on a negative judgment concerning mankind's flaws. These flaws are seen as ubiquitous, i.e. possessed by almost everyone to a serious degree and not just by a few extreme cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy
• beardyw 4y ago
  Why do people use PayPal? I looked at it as a way to collect payments and it seemed the worst option to me. What is the attraction?
  • ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
    Everyone has PayPal.
    • beardyw 4y ago
      They do? Is that an American thing? I don't know anyone in the UK who has it.
      • Kye 4y ago
        PayPal works in 200+ countries and 25 currencies. Do you think they would go to the trouble of supporting that if there weren't a lot of users in those countries? It's often the only way to pay someone.
• snapplebobapple 4y ago
  This is one of the great failings of the constitution. It was meant to protect us from tyrants but the only tyrants contemplated were the government because they were the major tyrant at the time. We should be using a modern measure of potential to be a tyrant, like market power, and regulating these companies on a stepped system where the more market power they have the more they are subject to the exact same rules the government is.