Coinbase bans the accounts of Gab and its founder
twitter.com
twitter.com
Until a service becomes so widespread and essential as to be declared a public good/utility, this looks like 'business is business' IMO.
Also business is business only gets you so far. What happens if service was withdrawn because the user was black?
in the analog world countries provide civil rights protections for day to day commerce for this type of situation, in the digital world it's unlikely to ever matter that you are black, unless you state so in the first place.
The question itself shines light on the important difference here. Gab is not discriminated because of some natural feature about them, they are discriminated against because they act like unsavoury people that nobody wants to be associated with.
Nope, being black is not the same as being a troll or a fascist on the internet. People have the right to not be associated with you if you present yourself in a manner that alienates other customers or is simply incompatible with our values at large.
There's exactly one person being discriminated against here and that is based on the business they run and the relationship they had with Coinbase. Coinbase, and Brian, have every right to limit their business dealings with Gab, and can do so without it being "discriminatory" in nature. Arguing otherwise may be considered an attempt to control the conversation in a direction that leads away from logic.
You said 'incompatible with our values', but it's not 'us' that make these decisions by voting or something, it's a handful of corporations.
I do agree that there should be basic protections on private platforms for speech, especially if people are threatened to be excluded based on ethnic or religious or apolitical identity. But I think it would be absurd to say, if a company could not shut down a threatening or violent, or otherwise outside of the norm organisation.
Looks to me that it's 4 years old, has 3 members, and is still "pre alpha".
This is purely a planned political attack. Gab refused to censor politically incorrect thinking. Facebook is happy to censor, even going after Diamond and Silk until congress started asking uncomfortable questions.
So for Gab to not have access to funds either one of two things can be true. 1: There is a large conspiracy of banking organisations to stifle Gab for reasons we can speculate about. 2: Each of these organisations have seen Gab and made individual decisions about whether they want to associate themselves with Gab.
What boggles my mind is how many people think that it must be 1.
Having said that, who are all those companies regulated by?
I don't have a fully formed accusation here. All I know is that finance is heavily regulated. I suspect even the fear of regulators asking questions, and all the paperwork that would entail would be enough reason for some companies to cut their links.
I suspect Gab isn’t related to something like that though. It’s more that media focus on Gab means each company they do business with will want to drop them as a PR hot potato, to avoid news articles saying “why is X still willing to work with Gab?”
Meanwhile, Gab is just reaping what it has sowed. They claim that they represent the silent majority, and if that's not another one of their lies they shouldn't have any problems setting up their own financial services.
A small excerpt:
> On May 29, 2014, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform published a highly critical staff report that concluded:[21]
> “ Forceful prosecution of those who defraud American consumers is both responsible and admirable. However, Department of Justice initiatives to combat mass-market consumer fraud must be legitimate exercises of the Department's legal authorities, and must be executed in a manner that does not unfairly harm legitimate merchants and individuals.
> Operation Choke Point fails both these requirements. The Department's radical reinterpretation of what constitutes an actionable violation under § 951 of FIRREA fundamentally distorts Congress' intent in enacting the law, and inappropriately demands that bankers act as the moral arbiters and policemen of the commercial world. In light of the Department's obligation to act within the bounds of the law, and its avowed commitment not to "discourage or inhibit" the lawful conduct of honest merchants, it is necessary to disavow and dismantle Operation Choke Point.
regarding Gab, your 2nd paragraph seems to agree with what I said, so nothing to say there.
So closer to 1.
I think it's less conspiracy and more defensive business strategy.
I wish payment processing and banking were more anonymous, and I'm very interested in projects like GNU Taler[1] that seek to find privacy conscious ways of doing transactions online. However, if they can't even find a bank to do business with them (or start one themselves), they're kind of screwed.
Why do people care so much about Gab, but not gambling sites which have been successfully dealing with far worse problems for years now?
All of these processors ultimately depend on their banks, who are super strict. Banks are super strict because money is an insanely regulated industry. Banks are directed by regulators and lawmakers. They do not take any chances.
Services like these each somehow coincidentally (not really) come to the same conclusions because they're all trying to appease the same industry, directed by the same regulators. If they lose their banking relationships they are dead.
It's not a conspiracy and they're not really making individual decisions either, it's just how modern banking works.