PayPal has shut down the account of the Free Speech Union, an organisation which defends gender-critical academics and people who have lost work for expressing opinions.
The US payments company shut down the accounts of the Free Speech Union, its founder Toby Young, and his opinion and news website the Daily Sceptic with no clear explanation last week, The Telegraph can reveal.
Mr Young said he suspected the action was driven by political motives and was a “sinister form of cancel culture”.
He was told last week that PayPal was shutting down the accounts because of violations of PayPal’s “Acceptable Use Policy”. He is unaware of any possible ways he or the organisation could have breached the policy, which lists banned transactions such as those which are illegal or support ponzi schemes.
A spokesman for PayPal said it could not comment on individual customers, but said that PayPal “regularly assesses activity against our long-standing Acceptable Use Policy and will discontinue our relationship with account holders who are found to violate our policies”.
He added: “Achieving the balance between protecting the ideals of tolerance, diversity and respect for people of all backgrounds and upholding the values of free expression and open dialogue can be difficult, but we do our best to achieve it.”
Sigh.
That would be 2(f) in the “acceptable use policy”, which in and of itself is so widely worded it basically says : “whatever/whenever we feel like it.”
They’re simply a high-profile victim of the current ongoing Paypal pogrom.
Lots of peeps I know have encountered problems, or even got their account suspended over.. well.. half of them still don’t know.
Quite easy to do as well, as only a couple of “complaints” will trigger the suspension algorythm, and that’s trivial to arrange that for “Activists” or less scrupulous comptetitors.
And then the one affected is dependent on the Paypal Helldesk.. Good luck with that…
Any sane person doesn’t use Paypal anymore. Too much risk of encountering one of their spurious and incomprehensible “Rules” and getting locked out of your money.
This could get very interesting pick as the FSU is (rightly) extremely litigious.
“In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Well that’s interesting Grikath. So Paypal confiscate YOUR money. And you have to go to court to try and get it back.
How glad I am I’ve never had anything to do with them.
Boganboy
I had an account once.
Then I heard our Gracious Host had had problems.
So I cancelled my account and told ’em why.
Not a great act of sacrifice, at all, just insurance.
Doesn’t paypal need some sort of a financial services licence to operate in this country? Don’t those licences require some sort of non-discrimination obligations?
I hope the FSU etc know some useful people in the blob to ask that sort of question.
I once had a local authority employer try to fire me because I’d previously been an elected councillor. I pointed out how illegal their action would be, along with a draft press release.
Do we know what specifically triggered PayPal’s action? It’s unclear, and I cannot believe that it could possibly be something as trivial as the ongoing trans war….
Banks and financial services companies are not like the Royal Mail, they don’t have a universal service obligation. They do however risk being sued for discrimination. Trouble here is ‘being in favour of free speech’ isn’t a protected characteristic in law. So the only thing FSU can do is go elsewhere.
And we all know the trouble with that. Elsewhere isn’t different once the activists find you and complain
I wonder if they’ve closed the Taliban account?
No?
Thought not…
“Doesn’t paypal need some sort of a financial services licence to operate in this country? Don’t those licences require some sort of non-discrimination obligations?”
IF you fall afoul of the staatstreue Antifa, Merkel and Scholz’s brownshirts, here in the glorious Fourth Reich, they will bombard your bank with demands to close your account.
The banks and big companies always comply with demands from the paramilitary wing of the regime.
One plucky “far right” journalist has had five successive banks close his account.