Remember back in 2020 when HSBC froze the accounts of various Hong Kong democracy activists, and froze the accounts holding donations for a non-profit organization supporting their efforts? Rightly, there was uproar, with the bank’s CEO Noel Quinn quizzed by Parliament, and protests by senators of both parties in the US. My wife closed her HSBC accounts in protest.
We can all recognize communist or fascist tyranny. We know when businesses bow down to tyrants.
Flick forward to 2022: Paypal has closed the accounts of ‘toadmeister’ Toby Young, and the Free Speech Union he founded and leads. No explanation.
This is the face of tech tyranny. The Free Speech Union exists only to defend people whose lives and careers have already been actually ruined by locally-empowered tyrants who hate them. That willingness to defend the persecuted is what Paypal now decrees is beyond the pale.
Loathsome to to their corporate beliefs, apparently, are attempts to defend those already unjustly persecuted for speech-crimes.
President (for life?) and CEO of Paypal is Daniel Shulman. He is a tyrant, every inch as recognizably as Hong Kong’s communist lick-spittles.
Tyranny like this will certainly flourish and extend its malevolent grip unless it is stopped. What can be done?
Cancel your Paypal account. There are alternatives which at present are less grotesquely horrible.
Join the Free Speech Union. The £50 annual subscription is the cost of fighting back.
Write to your MP. Bad actors like Paypal get away with it because they have engineered a monopolistic or near-monopolistic market position. Point out that Paypal warrants an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority.
Complain to the Competition and Markets Authority about Paypal’s abuse of its market position.
Tech tyranny is the greatest threat to an open, informed society which our representative democracy needs. The US tech monsters have effectively waged war on US society, for profit, and in doing so have turned the US into a cautionary tale.
Paypal’s assault is not just the principle of free speech itself, but the principle that defending free speech from malevolent actors who would suppress it. It is a warning shot. It’s not a glimpse into a dystopian future. It’s a revelation that. . . we’re already there.
Addendum. It strikes me that PayPal might be vulnerable to a libel action from the Free Speech Union. After all, PayPal's actions are justified, they say, by FSU's breach of their Acceptable Use Policy, which ban those "that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance." By its action, PayPal is publicly accusing FSU of that. That looks to me like libel: FSU should sue, and invite them to prove it in a British court. Any lawyers out there willing to take the case?
I think you have missed one other, more important, reason for concern. The PayPal-FSU story shows, again, that a collection of US corporations, from Visa/MasterCard, through PayPal and Patreon, to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, have enormous control over our political discourse, and thus technology. Given those companies often seem in thrall to an extremist ideology, and that even if they were not, could be leaned on by the United States government, they present a clear and present danger to our democracy and even sovereignty.