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> Payment processors choosing not to do business at their whim.

Where have you been the past decade? This is nothing new, especially for Paypal. Payment processors choose not to do business at their whim, whether it's because you have too high a chargeback, you're from the wrong country, you're too troublesome or your business simply is in a category card issuers don't like.

Payment processing is an area there's never ever even been a semblance of a "neutral pipe" system.

Payment processors choosing not to do business at their whim.

It's not on a whim.

Payment processors -- including Visa, Amex, Discover, Mastercard -- have clear rules about hate sites and promoting violence. This is a rule clearly spelled out that all merchants must follow.

Infowars violates rules they agreed to follow when they became a merchant. That's breach of contract.

Edit: and here's Paypals AUP: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full

You may not use the PayPal service for activities that: ... relate to transactions involving ... the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory

Seriously... that's breach of contract. Does infowars need to follow the contracts they agree to? Do those that promote hate get to disregard contracts?

Peddling hate speech does not earn you the ability to disregard contracts you have agreed to.

Hate speech is protected free speech. Not because anyone loves hate speech, but defining your opponents views and journalism as “hate” is very easy to do depending on your worldview.

That has no relevance in this discussion since the Government wasn’t involved.

The government intervenes and is involved all of the time in private companies regarding constitutional rights (e.g., a bakery making cakes for non-traditional marriages).

I don't like Alex Jones or his view, but we have strong protections for speech in this country for good reasons and I don't want to see us sacrifice them because someone we hate comes along.

PayPal has free speech rights as well. Would you force a Black owned printer to do business with the KKK?

Well... yes. Why not? Equal protection under the law means exactly that. If you--as a government--force a business to cater to customers it doesn't like, then you need to do this to all businesses. Why else use the words 'equal protection'? Otherwise just let businesses themselves decide who they cater to (black-owned printers, PayPal, Christian bakers, etc.)

As for defending PayPal's 'free speech rights'... that's pretty rich considering PayPal seeks to make further inroads into China, a nation decidedly anti-'free speech rights.'

That's something I find strange among most respondents here--they're very quick to defend PayPal's association rights against Infowars, yet they seem all too willing to overlook PayPal's ignoring its own core values just to do business with an oppressive regime, i.e. PayPal refuses to do business with Infowars because Infowars' 'promotion of hate and discrimination runs counter to our core value of inclusion.' China is inclusive? Huh.

It certainly makes me wonder how many of YC's community are budding authoritarians working towards the day they, too, can PayPal a person out of existence?

I mean, we make KKK-owned enterprises do business with black people...

One's a choice and one's not of course, but there is still a comparison to be made there.

Edit to add: it's possible that being a conspiracy theorist is as much a choice as being schizophrenic is. If that was the case - true, proved beyond any doubt, it's genetic or environmental, whatever - would you be willing to extend the same protections to conspiracy theorists as you would to other protected classes?

I refuse to do business with you because you’re gay vs. I am terminating our business relationship because you violated our Acceptable Use Policy that you previously agreed to abide by.

I’m not a lawyer, but these sound quite different.

Oh, so you can receive money via PayPal without accepting their Acceptable Use Policy? No? Then that sounds like a ban with a fig leaf on top.

Or would an online bakery with a terms of use that banned "using their products in a way that could be seen to endorse or support gay marriage" be acceptable?

I do not criticize their decision to select customers with whom they want to do business.

Definition of hate alone is extremely broad. And depends from culture to culture, country to country. Do we want many Interents with each having it's own rules? Or one Internet connecting people like it was envisioned to be?

I'm asking more meta/philosophical question here. What kind of precedence do they set with these actions?

I don't think they're setting any precedent here. It's not a new thing for people and businesses to distance themselves from people who say batshit crazy things like this. You cannot talk like this and be surprised when people want to distance themselves from you:

When I think about all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped, I have zero fear standing up against her. Yeah, you heard me right. Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children. I just can't hold back the truth anymore. Hillary Clinton is one of the most vicious serial killers the planet's ever seen.

[0] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-hillary-clinto...

It is on a whim. "Hate" clauses are essentially put there to let companies or governments make decisions on a whim. Try nailing down a precise definition of the term and then applying it consistently and you'll find it's impossible: either you can't define or it you can't apply it consistently. These clauses are always and everywhere a form of selective discrimination.

> there is a totalitarian government in some banana republic that forces these companies (who are already global) not to support dissidents of it's regime in order to operate in their countries, what moral high ground will they take?

I mean, I get your point, but doesn't the US do this exact thing? Forcing companies not to do business with what it considers to be dissidents in foreign countries (ones that just happen to not align with its interests...)

> ...this is now dangerous precedence. Payment processors choosing not to do business at their whim.

Hasn't this been going on since the beginning of payment processors? I'm pretty confident in thinking that almost every payment processor does this frequently for all kinds of reasons.

This is an effect of free speech: a merchant is not obligated to engage in business with customers they do not approve of, unless it runs afoul of the law. The law does not grant Alex Jones protected status to spread bullshit.

Freedom of speech does not imply freedom from consequence.

> Freedom of speech does not imply freedom from consequence.

This is double speak. If the government throws you in jail for saying something, you could say the same thing. You had freedom of speech but not freedom from consequence. You're distorting the meaning of freedom of speech.

>If the government throws you in jail for saying something, you could say the same thing.

Which is why we have the first amendment, and why it covers government only.

Are you claiming that free speech means merchants should be forced to do business with customers they don't approve of?

Or that no one who disagrees with a particular point of view should be able to express that disagreement?

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence when that consequence is also an expression of free speech.

Having a moral high ground doesn't stop authoritarians from being authoritarian. They'll abuse power anyway, it's what they do.

With all due respect, PayPal has already been pulling the "choosing not to do business at their whim" shit for QUITE some time now. And yes, it IS a serious problem. But it's way, way too late to set the precedent.

> Imagine scenario - there is a totalitarian government in some banana republic that forces these companies (who are already global) not to support dissidents of it's regime in order to operate in their countries, what moral high ground will they take?

This is already how it works with gambling and sex related sites in the United States. The CC processors crank up the merchant fees for those businesses (sometimes above 30%) and in exchange congress backs down on whatever regulatory threat they have pending. Then congress can tell their constituents that they are “cracking down on vice”

> It's a high barrier to enter due to governmental regulations.

Well-designed regulations can also protect consumer choice. In europe there's SEPA and IBAN transfers between any bank, and there's plenty of those. And banks are obligated to give anyone an account.

So it would be near-impossible to shut someone down like this.

Banks in Europe are not obligated to give anyone an account when it comes to business accounts this isn’t about individual basic accounts, current accounts and business accounts are completely discretionary and business accounts are actually notoriously hard to open in some countries even the UK.

Banks can't pick and choose like PayPal can. PayPal has gone to great lengths to avoid being classified as a bank specifically so they can avoid banking regulations, like cutting off services to people without oversight.

Doesn’t PayPal has a banking license in the US and the EU?

IIRC they merged with x.com specifically because x had a banking license and they had gotten an EU license in the mid 2000’s.

Also banks can pick and choose in fact they do it all the time try asking for a loan form a bank as a porn production company or even opening a business account with one, most of them won’t touch you same goes for many other businesses.

Banks in some cases may not be allowed to deny services to individuals for non financial reasons they same does not hold true for businesses and organizations.

I'm an engineer and not a lawyer, but from what I remember, the license lets them do some banking functions, but doesn't make them count as a full bank subject to all the banking regulations.

PayPal EU is a bank registered in Luxemburg and their EU operations are regulated as one: http://www.e-comlaw.com/e-finance-and-payments-law-and-polic...

PayPal issues credit and loans and credit cards they are an issuing bank and they also serve as an acquiring bank for processing payments.

Their account balance may not count as deposit and as such that part might not be under banking regulations in the US but in the EU they are regulated as one.

> Payment processors choosing not to do business at their whim.

In the case of Jones, everyone can see with his/her own eyes what Jones/Infowars have been doing: peddling lies and inciting vile hatred (especially the "crisis actor" conspiracy stuff). Either one stands up against such people or one supports them. There is no "center" when it comes to Jones and his neo-Nazi friends.

> peddling lies and inciting vile hatred

I’m not sure this is a good argument. You could say the same thing about pretty much any mainstream media, e.g. in relation to Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” (and they probably resulted in more deaths than anything reported by Infowars).

Censorship is mostly arbitrary, really.

We're really saying Alex Jones calling politicians serial killers and rapists is comparable to typical mainstream media bias, and is more or less a reasonable thing to say depending on if you're 'Liberal' or 'Conservative'? C'mon:

When I think about all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped, I have zero fear standing up against her. Yeah, you heard me right. Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children. I just can't hold back the truth anymore. Hillary Clinton is one of the most vicious serial killers the planet's ever seen.[0]

[0] http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-hillary-clinto...

I know the US has very lax laws around these things, but doesn’t that rise to the level of defamation/libel even there? Out and out accusing someone of serial murder and child rape seems a bit much.

Public figures are much less protected. Imagine if this were not the case: most of the people responding to Trump's tweets would be in prison for defamation/libel now.

A random ordinary American would be protected from such accusations.

I don't know anything about Alex Jones and never listen to his shows. But this is the second time now I've investigated an apparently absurd statement from him and discovered it's being selectively quoted to make him look bad.

The page you link to has a clip of the audio in question:

https://soundcloud.com/rightwingwatch/jones-hillary-personal...

Let me complete the rest of what he says:

"Am I talking about [snip some reference to a devil worshipping story], oh no, I don't mean that, I'm not talking about that, I mean 200,000+ dead Christians, with her operation with Syria, and her operation in Libya, and not let the Christians get out, and directing Al Queda and ISIS, who target and murder children and put them through sex slavery, and throw Catholic priests off cliffs, and kill people en-masse, and murder gays, and everything else you can imagine, because they don't like peaceful people."

Obviously Alex Jones is very far from being a precise user of language. Clinton has not "personally murdered" anyone. That accusation on its own is clearly absurd, but put in context as a reference to her support for various wars in the Middle East it merely becomes the sort of dumb overblown rhetoric that you tend to find at the political extremes. Likewise for the claim she directed ISIS. Clinton was/still is a supporter of the various militant groups that are allied against both Assad and ISIS, although from what I've read there wasn't that much between these groups and ISIS religiously or behaviourally. So his grip on the situation in Syria is also pretty bad.

But this is hardly unique to Alex Jones. For example here's an article that claims "For profit, Tony Blair murdered over a million humans in Iraq and Afghanistan":

https://www.dailysquib.co.uk/world/26825-the-evil-of-tony-bl...

The author of that article, Louis Cypher, is a nobody. But if I had claimed Louis Cypher said "Tony Blair murdered over a million humans" and omitted the rest he'd obviously sound totally crazy. Making someone look bad by deleting parts of what they say is just that easy.

Anyway, I have to admit, this is apparently becoming some sort of pattern - I read someone explaining on Hacker News why Alex Jones must obviously be suppressed and crushed by providing some idiotic sounding quote, I spend about 30 seconds finding the source of the quote and then I discover his words have been maliciously chopped up in order to manipulate me. I don't like this.

> We undertook an extensive review of the Infowars sites, and found instances that promoted hate or discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions, which run counter to our core value of inclusion

Stop trying to come up with far fetching conclusions that don't even make sense. Why can't Paypal ban someone (especially someone like Alex Jones) for this reason? Would I want to earn transaction fees from Alex Jones' sales? If I were the owner of Paypal, I wouldn't want to do business with him, either.