Snip, unsnip… PayPal appears to be pulling a Michael Scott with a back-and-forth approach to what was once declared a “mistake”. What a difference two weeks can make.
Are sources of information outside the corporate intelligentsia about to be in danger? PayPal’s restoration of speech policing, with tremendous financial penalties usually only held by a government, has many fretting only the approved narrative will be allowed soon.
Several accounts have raised the red flag on social media about the situation at PayPal. A few months ago PayPal (and by extension Venmo) got in hot water for expanding their definition of prohibited activity and quietly slipping a $2,500 fine into their terms of service for accounts holders accused of misinformation. According to their terms of service, for each violation of their Acceptable Use Policy PayPal reserves the right to directly debit funds from their user’s accounts at PayPal’s discretion. After public backlash and the threat of a United States Senate inquiry, PayPal removed the misinformation language from their terms of service.
Fast-forward to today and the misinformation language is gone, but
the fine is still there. The area that seems to be of concern to some is PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy now includes a poorly defined prohibition against the promotion of hate, violence, racial intolerance and “other forms of intolerance.”
While any reasonable person stands against hate and violence, the definition of these things seems to be more inclusive than it used to be. On the other hand, PayPal is a global company and creating a consistent definition of “hate” that allows them to operate in more than 200 countries can be problematic. PayPal operates in countries that are at war with each other. PayPal operates in countries where the government has been accused of human rights issues. On a lighter note, even within the last day, the YouTube channel Mickey Views had a video of a
Disney World nighttime spectacular removed for “violence.” In that case, the financial harm to a channel such as Mickey Views is substantial but contained. What do we do in a world where posting the “wrong” video or article covering a story against a major corporation can result in a total loss of funds? How does that impact coverage of entertainment? It won’t be the big news media outlets that have to worry about such a thing.
In each of those instances, there are reasonable differences in perspective on what constitutes hate, violence, or intolerance. There are also reports that PayPal’s policy was written by a contractor in Beijing. The question of whether PayPal will change their policy will largely be dependent on the reaction of their customers. PayPal itself states that the fines are necessary to compensate for damage to PayPal that might be caused by users that promote hate, violence, or intolerance. Where the trouble comes in is the interpretation and implementation of these terms and policies: when subjectivity goes in one direction of bias, an entire group of people could potentially be cut out of digital commerce from the world’s biggest online transactor.
For many, the whiplash of a “mistake” quietly being included in the fine print weeks later is yet another sign that global corporations are not acting as fair brokers of free speech and commerce. A number of western thinkers are quite worried that systems such as PayPal’s could lead to a worldwide social credit system similar to what exists in China. Political and ideological posturing could determine your place in the world. Others believe changes such as PayPal’s usher in a kinder, more empathetic online atmosphere.
What do you think? Is this policy reasonable or does it simply create a business weakness for PayPal? Does this policy cause you to reconsider your choice of payment processor? Comment below.
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