Disaster PayPal bans Alex Jones

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/technology/paypal-blocks-infowars.html

SAN FRANCISCO — PayPal has become the latest tech giant to cut off Infowars, the conspiracy website run by the right-wing provocateur Alex Jones.

Infowars was informed by PayPal on Thursday night that it would have 10 business days to find a new payment processor.

PayPal handles all transactions, including credit cards, for the Infowars online store. The store has been a significant source of revenue for the company, selling vitamins and nutritional supplements, as well as Infowars-branded apparel. PayPal has also handled donations that Infowars receives from its supporters.

PayPal acted weeks after Twitter, Facebook and other large tech companies blocked Infowars from their services. Most of those companies said the site had violated their policies by promoting hate speech and misinformation.

Mr. Jones attended a recent Senate hearing where Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg discussed efforts by their companies to deal with disinformation on their platforms. And after a separate House hearing that directly addressed Republican claims that Twitter was biased against conservatives, Mr. Jones tried to confront Mr. Dorsey on Mr. Dorsey’s way out.

After the phaseout period of 10 business days, PayPal will stop doing any business with Infowars and its subsidiaries, like the site Prison Planet, a PayPal spokesman said.

The spokesman declined to cite any specific problems that had led to the decision, but said that after “extensive reviews” the company had “found many instances of content that promoted hate and discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions.”


The Epicenter of the Housing Bust Is Booming Again. (That’s a Warning Sign.)

Steve Perry Walked Away From Journey. A Promise Finally Ended His Silence.

A Teacher Made a Hitler Joke in the Classroom. It Tore the School Apart.
This is not the first time that PayPal has waded into politically fraught territory. In 2010, the company cut off payments to WikiLeaks. More recently, PayPal stopped working with neo-Nazi and alt-right websites.

Records from 2014 show that Mr. Jones’s operations were bringing in nearly $20 million, mostly from supplements, such as Super Male Vitality, which purports to increase testosterone, that he hawks on his radio shows, The New York Times recently reported.

Since being barred from Facebook and Twitter, Infowars has had to find new online platforms, and its audience has fallen off significantly. But PayPal’s decision may be particularly damaging, because it will be much harder for Infowars to find another company to handle transactions for the site.

For now, Infowars is still able to sell at least some of its goods on Amazon and eBay, where its payments are not handled by PayPal.

An article on the Infowars site that announced PayPal’s decision said the move was a “political ploy designed to financially sabotage an influential media outlet just weeks before the midterm elections.”

The article said PayPal had told Infowars that the decision was made because Infowars had violated its “acceptable use policy.” PayPal’s spokesman said its decision went beyond the violation of any single policy.

Right Wing Watch, a progressive advocacy organization, published an article in August pointing out areas where Infowars appeared to be violating PayPal’s terms of service. At the time, PayPal did not take action and offered no comment.

Infowars did not respond to an email requesting comment.

---

@Null give Alex Jones advice about this since you know so well about getting kicked off of payment services, help advertise your name.

 

[BradyBunchFan]

The Infowars app has been removed from the App Store.

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/08/apple-bans-infowars-app-from-app-store/amp/

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Oh my god if they keep censoring this idiot I'm going to have to start seeing what he has to say. And I don't want to do that... please stop it libs. You've already made me defend donald fucking trump, you're going to make me take an insane conspiracy theorist's side now? Why are you guys doing this to me?

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

Why are they so afraid of a humble water filter salesman?

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

You've already made me defend donald fucking trump, you're going to make me take an insane conspiracy theorist's side now?

Is it still a conspiracy "theory" if all available evidence supports it?

 

[BeanBidan]

When you don't name the Jew. They're bound to back stab yew

 

[JohnDoe]

I agree, the harder they try to silence him the wider and more entrenched his listeners become. This is a textbook failure in controlling narrative.

How are these supposedly brilliant media giants so goddamn bad at controlling the narrative?

 

[frozenrunner]

I agree, the harder they try to silence him the wider and more entrenched his listeners become. This is a textbook failure in controlling narrative.

How are these supposedly brilliant media giants so goddamn bad at controlling the narrative?

They're used to being able to brute force their narratives into acceptance. It's just not working in this landscape.

 

[Zaryiu]

Absolutely disgusting, like i said you might not like Alex Jones but censorship is never okay

 

[polonium]

I agree, the harder they try to silence him the wider and more entrenched his listeners become. This is a textbook failure in controlling narrative.

How are these supposedly brilliant media giants so goddamn bad at controlling the narrative?

This is what happens when you get your own way for too long.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Is it still a conspiracy "theory" if all available evidence supports it?

Well that's the problem isn't it? Even though the alternative explanation of "He's an insanely offensive jackass" is believable, it's still hard to dismiss his claims of being silenced while he's... you know... being silenced.

 

[ADN_VIII]

This just in: business refuses to do business with other business. No news at 11.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

This just in: business refuses to do business with other business. No news at 11.

Well, it's more like "Tons of businesses just so happen to all refuse to do business with someone at the same time, while doing nothing similar to similarly extreme people on their own side of the political aisle"

Businesses making moves that are actually bad for them financially, all at the same time, is suspicious. There's a reason we have anti trust laws.

 

[TowinKarz]

Is it legal? Probably

Is it scummy? Definitely

Is it smart? Not at all, get woke go broke is a thing for a reason. Average people can see that a company summarily barring a customer out of the blue for having the "wrong" politics can and will be leveraged against the next wrongthinker in line, which could easily be them, this means that they look for alternatives, and the "woke" company ends up with it's customer base being shrieking, unpleasable SJWs who will never be satisfied that all the subversives have been purged and will gladly eat each other.

 

[StarkRavingMad]

At the rate this is going, we are going to read headlines about how Alex Jones will be banned from being able to draw his own money from the bank he's a part of. lol.

How far can this go?

Way to prove the conspiracy theorist right, morons.

 

[Marvin]

Well, it's more like "Tons of businesses just so happen to all refuse to do business with someone at the same time, while doing nothing similar to similarly extreme people on their own side of the political aisle"

Businesses making moves that are actually bad for them financially, all at the same time, is suspicious. There's a reason we have anti trust laws.

You need to prove collusion.

This theory has the same dumb premise as the deep state shit (at least the explicit conspiracy form of it): that a bunch of people who grew up in the same place with the same values had to explicitly collude to come to the same DC elite / San Fran sjw conclusion.

That's silly. It'd like be arguing out that spoiled frat guys had to explicitly collude to all decide to wear the same stupid clothing.

Culture transmits information very effectively.

Here's what didn't happen: a group of people met in a dimly lit conference room and talked about how they were going to take over the world today.

Here's what actually happened: a bunch of people who grew up in the same microculture in America's anus, who all believe the same stupid shit, got a complaint from cranky sjws that a Bad Man was using their service. They poked around, saw he harassed parents of murdered children (he didn't, but he did stir up the retard mob against them; how culpable he is for that is legitimately debatable) or something like that, and then they said "good enough" and dropped him.

That's not illegal. If you think that should be illegal, that's certainly a perspective one can have. But you should think very, very carefully about the implications of that. Do you want the government to regulate culture?

Do you want them to micromanage who and why you're allowed to do business with? (They already do with anti-trust, but they have to find actual evidence of you colluding. If you leave no records, and it becomes a "I suspect you're being illegally mean to this client" sorta claim, do you want the government to make those sorts of decisions?) Should we make political affiliation a protected class, like California does?

Personally, I think it'd be fair to make financial companies, at least ones that are FDIC insured, have first amendment requirements. They're already on the teat of the government. Or if they want to go private to avoid that, that's fine, but then they lose FDIC insurance coverage.

Is it legal? Probably

Is it scummy? Definitely

Is it smart? Not at all, get woke go broke is a thing for a reason. Average people can see that a company summarily barring a customer out of the blue for having the "wrong" politics can and will be leveraged against the next wrongthinker in line, which could easily be them, this means that they look for alternatives, and the "woke" company ends up with it's customer base being shrieking, unpleasable SJWs who will never be satisfied that all the subversives have been purged and will gladly eat each other.

Financial access is always a pain in the ass as far as speech goes. It's the biggest issue, I'd say.

And to take the political angle out of it, sex related businesses also constantly get bounced by banks. I worked for a website that was in that field, we had barrels of money yet few banks wanted to take the risk of moving it for us.

I bet even tinder, funded by actual venture capital (I assume?) has hit some banking issues at various points. Shit's ridiculous.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

You need to prove collusion.

This theory has the same dumb premise as the deep state shit (at least the explicit conspiracy form of it): that a bunch of people who grew up in the same place with the same values had to explicitly collude to come to the same DC elite / San Fran sjw conclusion.

That's silly. It'd like be arguing out that spoiled frat guys had to explicitly collude to all decide to wear the same stupid clothing.

Culture transmits information very effectively.

Here's what didn't happen: a group of people met in a dimly lit conference room and talked about how they were going to take over the world today.

Uhh actually lots of the tech guys had a meeting that was publicized about how they were going to "deal with fake news". Later Alex Jones is de-platformed en masse. It's not a crazy conspiracy theory that they met, it happened. And the subject of their meeting was "fake news" aka right wing stuff we don't like. Not that I'm saying Alex Jones is right about anything, but they clearly are only worried about a certain kind of "fake news".

I imagine the room they met in was fairly well lit, and I doubt they talked about taking over the world.

As to whether it's actually illegal, I don't know. Stuff gets pretty damn confusing now, the president blocking people on twitter is a 1st amendment issue, twitter blocking alex jones isn't. Would it be illegal for the heads of the major newspapers to get together and all agree not to allow a certain subject to be covered? I don't know, but it's clearly sketchy as hell.

For a clear cut example of something similar that is illegal, we could look at something like the major suppliers of something all agreeing to a single price instead of competing with each other. That's beneficial to the companies, at the expense of the consumers.

How would you regulate such a thing? Pretty simply, honestly, the same way you regulate banks not only selling houses to white people. When you catch them doing it, you slap them with a huge fine or take away their license or something. You can't catch it every time, but over time it becomes not worth doing.

Honestly though, I'm just saying all this is making me think. It's evoking the streisand effect. I don't think Alex Jones has anything worthwhile to say. But him being silenced makes me more likely to listen to what he has to say. And if he starts talking about people trying to keep him from talking about the stuff he does, it's kinda hard to disagree with him now, isn't it?

 

[XYZpdq]

Uhh actually lots of the tech guys had a meeting that was publicized about how they were going to "deal with fake news". Later Alex Jones is de-platformed en masse. It's not a crazy conspiracy theory that they met, it happened. And the subject of their meeting was "fake news" aka right wing stuff we don't like. Not that I'm saying Alex Jones is right about anything, but they clearly are only worried about a certain kind of "fake news".

Wasn't there some asshole tweeting about how "oh boy I'm off to silicon valley to give a talk about how we need to control society" or something similarly on-the-nose?

 

[Marvin]

Uhh actually lots of the tech guys had a meeting that was publicized about how they were going to "deal with fake news". Later Alex Jones is de-platformed en masse. It's not a crazy conspiracy theory that they met, it happened. And the subject of their meeting was "fake news" aka right wing stuff we don't like. Not that I'm saying Alex Jones is right about anything, but they clearly are only worried about a certain kind of "fake news".

That's not the conspiracy theory. That wasn't the nature of the meeting.

Google has a large, popular search engine. They're worried about inaccurate results in their search engine. Because of the media, many people believe that if they google something and "fake news" comes up, it's an inaccurate result. So they're looking into ways to fix that issue. This is a very straightforward business decision. If people don't trust your search engine, they won't use it.

Basically an expansion of this. This concern about fake news seems silly to people who can competently vet information and/or come to their own conclusions (like many people on this forum, I hope). However "fake news" has gotten people killed in third world countries. Facebook is under fire because stupid street shitters have started lynch mobs using their platform.

Neither facebook nor google nor paypal need to collude to come to the same conclusion: fake news is bad for their image. The traditional media creates this image.

And the media doesn't need to ring up google and facebook to tell them to "fix" their search results. They can just run stories about how pajeets lynched some muslims because of fake news.

Pretty simply, honestly, the same way you regulate banks not only selling houses to white people. When you catch them doing it, you slap them with a huge fine or take away their license or something. You can't catch it every time, but over time it becomes not worth doing.

There are better legal definitions for black people and white people. Any definition for political discrimination will get argued to uselessness because it's political.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

Uh... yeah, that's one possibility. But you've gone from "They are just influenced by the same culture" to "OK they met up but it was for regular business reasons and not about reinforcing any kind of narrative"

Both things can be true, by the way. The fact that they already have so much in common culturally makes it much easier for them to come to agreements, especially when they are on record saying they believe it's their job to engineer society. That isn't some insane conspiracy theory, it's a fact.

Like I said, all this stuff just makes me feel irresponsible for completely ignoring someone saying these groups are trying to shut him up when these groups are trying to shut him up. It raises questions about public venues, and all that, new things for our society.

So I'm not saying you're wrong. It could all just be good business practice. It could be that these people are using their positions to influence society. We need to ask ourselves if we want them doing that. Of course, it's not as if that's new, media corporations have been around forever. But the ability for individuals to independently reach a large audience is fairly new. And it's easy to forget, but so much shit has come out over time through people on the internet. Widespread police violence, media reporting things completely wrong, things like that. Now the companies in control of all this want to police that content. Effectively, the media companies are back in control of the message, if we are willing to consider internet content providers like google as a media company (I think it fits).

 

[millais]

good job idiots