Gab.com banned from PayPal
twitter.com
twitter.com
But illegality is not the issue here. People simply have a right not to be associated with hate.
This is neither a right in any theoretical system of human rights I've seen, nor is there any practical way to disassociate people from a basic human emotion.
Also, don’t be cute about “hate”. We aren’t talking about the human emotion and you know it.
There is always a reason. The reason this time is probably:
"Gab is a popular gathering place for alt-right activists and white nationalists whose views are unwelcome or banned on other social media platforms. Early members included the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website. Other well known users have included controversial media personalities Alex Jones and Carl Benjamin."
https://globalnews.ca/news/4604015/gab-pittsburgh-shooting-f...
Which is an extremely reasonable position.
(I've never heard of Gab.)
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/octavia-sheepshanks/feminis...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/ny-times-journalist...
Maybe the short format lends itself to people posting dumb, thought-free comments.
It doesn't just lend itself, it exists for that express purpose.
The problem is people using Twitter as a primary venue for discourse which need more context or nuance than the platform allows.
In a business where "the hard technical problem" is how to stop fraud while allowing legitimate transactions to occur, you'd expect bad engineering to mean that the fraudsters win and the whole thing blows up. But what seems to have happened is that they've simply overcompensated on the other side. It's easy to stop fraud if you just flag everything as fraud. You end up with pissed off annoyed users, but you don't go bankrupt.
It's too bad. I really wish PayPal was a vibrant alternative to Visa & Mastercard; they fundamentally have the trust model right. It's just that they've been failing at execution for decades now and even with the braintree acquisition it looks like they're dead in the water, milking the last of their fading reputation.
Stripe is really the class act here, but they're playing a very conservative game. I wish they "owned" the payment process more instead of just being a front for credit cards. Maybe someday.
Is it really the employees, or the managers? There could be dilapidated business processes still in place that even prevent the company from healing itself. An interesting take on this is the book How The Mighty Fall.
Some relevant things to know might be if they have restructured a lot, and what their churn has looked like both in the executive suite and in engineering.
- Fractured product line; they have a bunch of products that are similar but different and they themselves are confused about which is which. Product management is in chaos.
- Tech debt from the 90s that has never been paid off.
- Acquisitions that were poorly integrated.
- Some weird attempt to mash their platform together with ebay that never quite fully baked, then more debt incurred hastily ripping them apart again.
- Some attempts at outsourcing development overseas? Can't be certain about this, just an impression.
- A major attempt to rewrite their API, but instead of simplifying they got an architecture astronaut to design it. He wrote a lot of annoying blog entries about HATEOAS but AFAICT no longer works at the company. The modern API was published but it's broken and crippled in so many different ways that they would be better off putting a big "DO NOT USE" at the top of their documentation.
- They've effectively abandoned the new API and apparently are relying on a sort of reverse-takeover from Braintree to save them. Maybe there is progress but it's been a while and I don't see any.
All most merchants wanted was "let me accept credit cards with quick and easy setup, even if it's expensive." (Hence the success of Square, Stripe, etc.). All they needed to do was to offer a few APIs that acted like every other credit card gateway, and they'd be fine.
But instead, they went whole hog on telling consumers "you never need to give the retailer a card number." Now, I'm skeptical this was ever a huge selling point, but it means that any API they can ever offer will always be a nonstandard mess to work with because it means you're going to have to bounce users off your site to finish checkout.
Most of the time however they're more than happy to take money from said places as long as people don't make it into a big PR problem.
This?
Is there a belief that we'll eventually reach a point where every single platform accessible to humanity is closed to those with ideas that we find unsavory? If not, then all of this seems to be causing much more harm than good as each attempt to silence them turns into a megaphone.
Alex Jones' audience collapsed after he was banned from the major social networks. Denying nonsense a megaphone works.
That being said, this kind of stuff is growing, but it's not because of some hand wavey "deplatforming" issue. It's because wages are stagnating people are being locked out of a future they want. Then some very powerful voices, often those benefiting from this very thing, turn around and tell them it's because of the Jews or the Mexicans or some other minority.
But that won't stop because it doesn't make economic sense. And you can't tell anyone this because your platform is built on it. So you have to keep spreading this toxicity and division even though it's killing the country. Because it's good for your side.
Then you combine this with the deep rooted racial issues that have been swept under the rug for the last 60 years with the current social changes plua external countries that would profit from division in America, and oh boy, you've got yourself some strong punch.
You're watching America eat itself in real time on platforms like this.
I'm gonna need to see evidence for that assertion before I take it at face value, because the alt right figures I monitor hate being deplatformed and anything that ruins their day is fine by me.
I mean if they really believe in free speech you would assume they would have mentioned Julian Assange or Wikileaks once. It would have made a lot more sense if they had ever mentioned how dangerous the censorship of Wikileaks by monetary means was. Fortunately they never did this so you can reasonably assume it is a front.
Extremists cry foul that their free speech rights are being violated or that they're being censored but within their own groups they would quickly stamp out opposing ideas or criticism.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
Paypal had no apparent issue with Gab until recently, so politics being the catalyst of Paypal's decision seems unlikely in this case, as they could have banned Gab at any time. Rather, recent extenuating circumstances seem to have made a client relationship with Gab no longer tolerable for Paypal.
https://gizmodo.com/stripe-freezes-gabs-account-for-nsfw-con...
His profile has now been nuked by Gab, but only to save face after the shooting. They would usually pride themselves in not removing that kind of content.
You wouldn't want to leave anyone the impression that this kind of stuff was somehow buried on individual user pages on Gab. Rather, it is the raison d'etre for the whole site.
Most posts look pretty normal.
It's also possible that they cleaned up the "popular" section specifically after the events.
Facebook comments and posts are just as random, and Voat is definitely worse.
Not worth a ban from PayPal, for sure.
https://www.google.com/search?biw=1280&bih=619&tbm=isch&sa=1...
Look at what a great time Bezos is having with MBS. Aside from executing homosexuals and oppressing women he must be a really great guy.
Is Twitter, who also gave him a forum and declined to censor or punish him for threatening tweets, being similarly affected?
I guess I was generally curious if people thought there'd be any sort of similar repercussion(s) toward Twitter though. I finally got off Twitter a couple months ago and can still imagine a likely "outrage bubble" yesterday about their handling of that account, but with little actual impactful change in user usage of the service, etc. (In fact, if anything, "major" events like this likely drive a lot of traffic, even if there's criticisms.) (Please note, I'm explicitly not commenting on whether or not I think the criticism/handling/etc is appropriate or justified.)
Should all of these businesses close?
A quick glance at Gab seems to show a large number of hate groups. Perhaps PayPal simply do not want the fallout that might ensue from that association.
Google has already removed the Gab app for violating their hate group policy. Apple and Twitter have also removed them.
You want protests in front of your office, Stripe, raising hell about the blood money you take? We can surely arrange that. For every TechBro being oh-so-concerned about "financial censorship, oh noes!": you ain't seen nothing yet.
not doing business with white supremacist profiteers > nice API and documentation
I signed us up for a Braintree account today as soon as I heard the PayPal news (PayPal now owns Braintree). We can take our business elsewhere -- and so can lots of other organizations and companies.
Free speech != white supremacist
That doesn't seem to be Gab's goal.
People like asparagirl will not join a free speech platform because her speech isn't really restricted from the non-free speech platforms. The people who have the biggest incentive to join these platforms are the one which are kicked out from all the other networks.
As to these platforms: the whole argument is essentially build on this slippery-slope fallacy that banning vile racism, anti-semitism, etc. inexorably leads more restrictions on speech, and (eventually) the end democracy.
That's demonstrably false: there have always been restrictions on speech (such as obscenity laws), so there really isn't some bright red line that would be crossed, and these restrictions have also not lead to the end of free speech.
There are restrictions on almost any other activity if you expand your definitions to the extremes: the right of peaceful assembly is just as central to democracy, but nobody is bothered by the restriction that you can't hold your protest in the Oval Office.
So maybe these people should consider being kicked out of all these platforms not as an incentive to change platforms, but to rather think about how far they must have removed themselves from society. Seriously: if the people who think youtube comments are worth it ban you, it's time to start listening more and posting less.
I am saying that if you create a product NEW, and hope to lure away people from product OLD, the only people who will migrate to the new platform are the people who have problem with product OLD which product NEW solves for them.
In case of the 'free speech' platforms, the group which has the problem and need of 'free speech' are the ones which are restricted in their speech.
Then they sit back and wonder how they can get those people at the ballot box too.
I don't know how this ends, but people like Asparagirl are clearly the sort of people Trump means when he talks about mobs. They will presumably never stop trying to shut down anyone she identifies as an enemy. This probably ends with some sort of legislative solution, in the long run.
Choosing to disassociate from speech you don't like is yet another use of free speech, as is banning groups that use speech you don't like from your private platform.
So yeah, gab, Reddit, and Facebook are exercising their right to free speech.
There are a lot more people who have the ability to shut down a website, regardless of hosting company choice, than have the ability to shut down dissemination of a flyer or stop a speaker from speaking.
Yes, a TOS is freedom of association. That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing for society when unpopular speech gets banned from every web host they use, in order.
However, this seems to be drifting off topic. Gab’s web site didn’t get shut down, they just got cut off by a payment processor.
Per tptacek's comments, the founder does appear to be an asshole, but that doesn't make him a neo-Nazi.
It's pretty accurate. They sound like Nazis. Take a look at
https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384
https://mobile.twitter.com/getongab/status/10565833547645214...
Relevant: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-05/uok-rsp05031...
(a) Why did you turn this into a left/right issue ?
(b) How is Paypal left ?
(c) Since when is the left the only one responsible for censorship or ToS enforcement.
Because many examples exist today where centrists and the right do this as well.
Which web platforms are censoring the left?
If PayPal is such an overwhelming giant of a service that you genuinely believe it needs to be forced to do business with certain corporations, then maybe it should be made into some sort of regulated service.
While there are other services, the popularity of PayPal makes it an important player
Maybe because of that it should be more careful in who they reject
I'm pretty sure companies in the 1960s South didn't want to serve black Americans.
In fact, many want the Government to go further and force bakers to make cakes for gay weddings when the owners don't support gay marriage [1]
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-05/court-sides-with-colo...
What is a protected class could be expanded and the Government can force everyone to do business with unsavoury types.
If making and receiving payments is considered a necessary utility posting and handling large amounts of cash is restricted, then providers should not have a right to deny service to customers who are not taking payments in violation of the law, regardless of distasteful their activities may be.
Would you agree if the state sided with electrical or water utilities to be able to refuse service to a customer such as brothel, on the grounds that their activitites where distasteful and immoral, not matter how legal?
That would be fine if the person denied service had the right to connect to a river or a well, lay down their own pipes and power and draw their water and electricity directly, but those rights are curtailed by the state, and it requires certain permissions and rights to do those.
The same can be said of online payments and credit card payments. They have become a necessary utility so much so that brothels and panhandlers have credit card machines. If private providers can deny such service arbitrarily then the state must become the providers of last resort.
if private processors can deny service for no reason
Ah yes, the "no reason" of being violence-inciting Nazis. What a reasonless judgement.
Do you see a reason stated in the termination notice?
Yes, it is, for the most part. Per Brandenburg v. Ohio,
"The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."