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PayPal continues to deal with the blowback from its rescinded plans to fine users $2500 for spreading misinformation. The company insists the language in its acceptable use policy (AUP) was published by mistake, quickly removed the language from its site and apologized for the confusion. That did not prevent PayPal’s stock from nose-diving as the story went viral and people accused the payment giant of censoring free speech. Straight Arrow News contributor Ben Weingarten says that while PayPal may have backtracked on its user policy, the fact that it drafted the language sends a clear and unsettling message.
The payment processing company, one of the largest non-bank lenders in the world with some $75 billion in assets in 2021, recently modified its user agreement, threatening to fine those who “use…PayPal…for activities that involve the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion … promote misinformation” at a rate of up to $2,500 per violation. When the world got wind of this policy, the criticism was, rightly, swift and massive. The stock tanked.
PayPal’s former President David Marcus even panned the company, tweeting:
“It’s hard for me to openly criticize a company I used to love and gave so much to. But @PayPal’s new AUP goes against everything I believe in. A private company now gets to decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with. Insanity. “
So PayPal backtracked.
A spokesman said that the updated “acceptable use policy” had gone “out in error that included incorrect information. PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy… We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused.”
But no one should be confused. Taking the company at its word, while it might have accidentally released the policy, it still drafted it. That means at very minimum it contemplated being an arbiter of truth – determining what counts as misinformation and pilfering people’s accounts to punish them should they engage in Wrongthink. And it already applies subjective measures to mete out punishment against its users – generally cutting in one ideological direction.
PayPal’s acceptable use policy already had language calling for fines up to $2,500 per violation for those using the product to engage in “the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory.”
In a world where up to half the country is classified as semi-fascist by the president, where conservatism, which calls for a colorblind society antithetical to bigotry, and a rule of law antithetical to violence – is equated by our betters with bigotry and violence, one can imagine how arbitrarily such a policy could be applied to ideological undesirables.
