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