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PayPal Still fining $2500 for Promoting anything “Discriminatory”, “Intolerance”
- Test0129 4y ago
- anonym29 4y agoSounds like a great idea on the surface. The question is who's deciding what counts as discriminatory, intolerant, or misinformation. Obvious examples like unabashed white supremacists aside... what happens in less clear cases, like when a Palestinian rights organization starts posting BDS stuff, and Israelis respond by calling them a terror group? One more justification for uncensorable, provably non-inflationary digital currencies.
- jagraff 4y agoNon-inflationary currencies are a bad idea. Without inflation, hoarding is incentivized, and investment discouraged (or at least, decreased). Currency is most useful when people spend it - money in bank accounts is useless for society.
- anonym29 4y agoThe decision to weigh the needs of society over the rights of an individual to retain the value derived from the productive output of their own labor is not a given. You own your body. Your labor is just you consciously deciding to operate your body in a manner that fulfills the needs of someone else in exchange for something of value. The value of your money being diluted is, for the worker, no different from wage theft by an employer - the rightful compensation from your productive labor being taken from you without your consent.
- hbrn 4y ago> rights of an individual to retain the value Those rights are not a given either. In fact this is a first time I hear those are "rights". If I pick an apple from a tree using my productive labor, somehow apple doesn't seem to care about my rights and starts to rot. Are you sure you're not confusing rights with desires?
- anonym29 4y agoYour apple analogy is not applicable here, because inflationary monetary policy is optional and instated by deliberate human choice, the decay of fruit is a non-optional natural process, not the result of deliberate human choice. Inflation is a tax, albeit an indirect one. It decreases purchasing power of the citizens (with the greatest harm incurred by the most vulnerable), it decreases the value of the nominal debt held by the government, and it's produced outside of a democratic process (federal reserve is, in theory, independent - not subject to the demands of politicians, who, in theory, represent the interests of the people). A tax that nobody voted for, that harms the poor and helps the government is nothing like the natural decay of an apple. It's value being taken from you without your consent, not unlike a mugger taking value from your wallet in the form of the currency itself. Many people engage in labor in exchange for value, denominated in currency. Theft of the value of the currency, ultimately, boils down to theft of labor.
- hbrn 4y agoNothing you said explains why retaining value of past work is a human right. Most results of the productive output decay same way as apple does. If you trade iPhone for a car, both car and iPhone will lose value over time. But in your world if you trade iPhone for $1000, only iPhone will lose value. That doesn't seem fair. Furthermore, you're saying it harms most vulnerable, but I don't believe it is generally true. If both a billionaire and a salaried working class person lose 10% of their wealth, gap between the two shrinks. Of course, laws of nature are such that rich are getting richer, but that's a different story.
- 4y ago
- tmn 4y agoThis is an often held view. Just for fun. Let me play devils advocate. Yes, currency hoarding (saving) is incentivized. This raises the bar for investing to investing that is needed / has clear value. Similarly, with an inflationary currency, it is real things that are incentivized to be hoarded. Is it not better to save currency and let real things circulate more freely to those who actually need them, as opposed to speculators.
- theow7384iri 4y agoIt is horrible idea, PayPal is payment provider, not some sort of morality police!
- jimcavel888 4y ago
- anonym29 4y agoI agree with your view of PayPal's proper role, but as a private business, if they want to choose not to do business with neo-nazis and ilk, that's entirely within their legal rights, and many would say it's morally justifiable too. What I take issue with more than anything else is the idea of a private business expropriating money from people based on the contents of their speech, as a change of contractual policy, buried deep in the terms of service, that many laypeople cannot be reasonably expected to read and comprehensively understand. I'm also concerned about this policy being weaponized by bad actors. Say someone impersonates a PayPal user online and posts genuine hate speech, complete with calls to violence. Or someone sends a payment to an innocent PayPal user with a memo that implies the PayPal user was engaged in hateful or malicious conduct. What happens when someone is having a mental health crisis and says some awful things on Twitter due to genuine mental health issues? What happens if a PayPal user's online account on another platform is hacked and used to post hateful content? What safeguards are in place to ensure that only those who are actually guilty are financially penalized?
- theow7384iri 4y ago
- Bud 4y agoDigital currencies solve exactly zero parts of this issue. Nor are they magically "non-inflationary"; that's just hilarious.
- bpodgursky 4y agoHow does it fail to prevent this? If you are the custodian of your own digital wallet (vs a PayPal account or linked bank account), PayPal cannot just remove money; it's not technically possible. All transactions are user-initiated. It's fine to dislike crypto, there are valid reasons, but let's be factual here.
- anonym29 4y agoMy post was not stating that digital currencies are inherently, "magically" non-inflationary. To me, it sounds like someone is either ignorant or arguing in bad faith for them to suggest that there are no digital currencies which are non-inflationary. BTC will never exceed 21 million bitcoins in circulation. To address your other concern - the "problem" being addressed is a private company seizing your money over the contents of your speech. With self-custody of digital currencies like Bitcoin, it is not possible for third parties to expropriate your funds, provided you have protected your private key.
- somenameforme 4y agoHe is referring to the finite supply. In 1960 the entire US monetary supply (M2) was $300 billion. Today it's $22 trillion. When there's so much more money out there inflation is inevitable. Monetary velocity is the true driver, but greater supply tends to drive greater velocity. By contrast sometime around 2140 the final Bitcoin will be mined, and we're already reducing the number mined per block. Inflation can still happen for reasons besides supply, but it's generally much less probable.
- xhkkffbf 4y agoShouldn't they fine themselves for intolerance of discriminatory behavior?
- LanceH 4y agoLet's slow down here. Paypal has a long history and we should give them the benefit of the doubt.
- syrrim 4y agoIt's their history that is causing people to assume the worst.
- haswell 4y ago> we should give them the benefit of the doubt In what form? Wait until people start losing $2,500 at a time for questionable reasons? Is your contention that we should wait to see if PayPal abuses this policy, or wait to see if PayPal rescinds it? Even if this was communicated in error, it shows how far this policy went internally to show up in customer facing copy. This calls into question any benefit of the doubt I’d usually be tempted to extend.
- Mindwipe 4y agoI think this comment was sarcasm, given PayPal have pulled this sort of stunt for years now (especially against anyone involved in adult content). They have always abused it. It's not new.
- swayvil 4y agoI was banned for telling a black person that "person of color" is a silly term, and that he should just call himself black. The justification cited : racism. These are the people in charge.
- moe091 4y agoI agree you shouldn't have been banned but also wtf is wrong with you lol
- Bud 4y agoSetting aside whether you should have been banned, what you did was incredibly stupid. What made you think that you should go around telling Black people what they "should" call themselves? That's not your business or your job. Just keep your mouth shut about things that you have no right to comment on.
- Out_of_Characte 4y agoIf I take your comment to heart then you should also shut up because its not your business to call people of color, black people. He most certainly has the right to comment. I do, too. I wouldn't want a payment processor to block you or fine you an arbitrary amount for vague rule violation with no legal recourse. Shutting up would mean this discussion wouldn't exist and paypal can continue stealing 2500 because they are always right.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Bud 4y agoYou're not too quick with valid analogies, are you? Hint: what you just posted wasn't one.
- endisneigh 4y agoAre you also black or a “person of color”? I’m curious why you think one term is somehow more appropriate than the other.
- ransom1538 4y agoWHO IS using paypal? They ban accounts daily with very little recourse to get any money. Getting your own merchant account isn't hard. They are just a crappy layer on top of a merchant account you can get today.
- yucky 4y agoTens of millions of businesses, and when you throw in their Venmo service you can probably double that number, although Venmo isn't typically used in B2C. And although it's not hard to get a merchant account per se, it is 100x harder than getting a Paypal account which takes 5 minutes and doesn't require any underwriting or paperwork. So people and businesses still use it (and Stripe, Square etc) rather than going through the hassle of getting a merchant account.
- sys32768 4y ago"Sole discretion" basically means if they don't like you or your activity or speech for any reason, they get to fine you and punish you. That sure sounds like intolerance to me. Otherwise what are they tolerating?
- swivelmaster 4y agoJust gonna put this here for no reason… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- asfarley 4y agoTrotting out the paradox of tolerance isn't an auto-win for pro-censorship "anti-facism" arguments. Imagine, one day, one of your own beliefs becomes lumped under the umbrella of facism. Imagine that you disagree with this categorization, but nonetheless, the categorization is made. How would you feel about someone telling you about the paradox of tolerance in this case? Don't you think it's a bit more complicated than this?
- swivelmaster 4y agoYes it’s more complicated, obviously, but OP was implying that any censorship at all equates to hypocritical intolerance, which is a simplistic absolutist position.
- falcolas 4y agoThis (that is, PayPal's TOS fines) isn't censorship. It's punishment for deeds that PayPal may hand down on a whim.
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
- bergenty 4y agoI’m willing to take the chance with slightly eager censorship than rampant fascism. It’s a literal no brainer and it’s disingenuous for you to ignore that.
- Mindwipe 4y agoPayPal have done this to sex workers and queer artists for fifteen years, so you'll have to forgive me not really giving a shit about the latecomers to this. We absolutely need to criminalise banking discrimination, but ultimately we are not going to because quite a lot of politicians quite like banking discrimination against their enemies.
- benj111 4y agoIsn't this already illegal? Surely the judiciary has a monopoly on punishment of 'crimes'. But I agree with your overall point. Payment processors should be seen as public utilities that people have a right to. It shouldn't be up to private companies, who has access to that.
- Mindwipe 4y ago> Isn't this already illegal? Not in the slightest, and has been actively encouraged since Operation Choke Point and FOSTA/SESTA.
- boredumb 4y agoSurely this won't turn into a political weapon and be used by people who want more control over society and politics to twist definitions of words to attack people they disagree with in order to avoid having a real conversation. It's abundantly obvious that if this was used to punish people who insist on a more authoritarian federal government or who openly hate people of european heritage online this would be an outrage to the usual suspects and not even given the light of day, the fact it's being applauded is a great indicator that this will be used to persecute people who dissent the federal government. You don't want a welfare state? Must be because you are intolerant to the minorities that use it. 2500$. You don't want to see a biological male pummeling a woman in a cage fight? obviously rooted in discriminatory ideology! 2500$. You questioned the election results? You are intolerant to democracy! Oh wait, you were referring to a special election in Georgia? Our bad, we've reimbursed you for our erroneous detection and applied the usual double standard. You are vocalizing autonomy and authority over your own body? Antivaxxer detected, docking 2500$. Oh, dang, the automated system didn't realize you were referring to an unwanted baby so we've reimbursed you.
- trs8080 4y ago
- timnetworks 4y agoI dunno why the midwestern tradesmen are so riled up as of late, especially the electricians (they keep yelling watt power?), but they have a point with the whole legally allowed to pummel a lady, after getting a doctor's note, itself also after said lady agreed to the whole thing.
- soundnote 4y ago> Right, because "pro-white," anti-trans, election-denying anti-vax sentiment is so censored online. Censorship doesn't have to be perfect to exist. It just has to exist, which it does.
- anonymousnotme 4y agoAs long as the transaction is legal, paypal should allow it to go through. They should not be discriminating against certain groups (as bad as they might be). They should maximize stock holder value as opposed to being biased against some groups. If they are wasting time/money with stuff like this, it really make one wonder what else they are wasting their time/money. I think I need to make sure that any paypal stock (and funds containing it) that I have needs t be sold and not to purchase any in the future.
- bergenty 4y agoYes they should. I don’t think PayPal should be able to enable sending money to say ISIS or some equivalent neo nazi group.
- anonymousnotme 4y agoUnless I am missing something, there is a terrorist watchlist or similar and I don't think it is legal to send to groups on that said list. So, I will stick with my statement that they should not be biased against parties that can legal participate in transactions.
- silexia 4y agoI don't like PayPal but I don't see alternatives for my business use case. I have lots of employees all over the world and some of them can only receive money via PayPal. Wire transfer fees are too high for small amounts of money. Western Union is very expensive.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoJon Spartan, you are fined 2500 credits for violating verbal and morality status.
- sn0w_crash 4y agoDemolition Man has turned out to be the most accurate depiction of the future.
- pjkundert 4y agoNow do CBDCs.
- casey2 4y agoOnly the type of people who are fine with this (fine) are using PayPal. If you've just woken up from a coma, leftoids use PayPal and Banks and rightoids use Monero and Gold.
- gaws 4y agoTake your meds.