PayPal is backtracking amid blowback to a forthcoming user agreement that would have fined users $2,500 per infraction for perceived violations of “misinformation” or presenting “a risk to user safety or wellbeing.”
“An AUP notice recently went 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,” PayPal’s spokesperson said. “We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused.”
“PayPal now appears to be backing down after many users posted on social media that they will be closing their accounts,” DiscloseTV reported.
PayPal’s retraction of the ‘social credit score’ policy follows upon critical reaction from across the political spectrum, including from tech managers for rival digital banking companies.
David Marcus, cofounder of Bitcoin-based company LightSpark, and a former manager of Facebook/Meta digital transactions, strongly objected to the policy.
“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,” Marcus said.
Agreed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 8, 2022
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is expected soon to take over social media giant Twitter, stated that he “agreed.”
PayPal’s policy caused a wave of outraged users to promptly cancel their accounts or terminate their digital banking relationships with the firm.
Seriously, close your PayPal account immediately if they don’t reverse this today. https://t.co/5FGG6LLTT5
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) October 8, 2022
“Seriously, close your PayPal account immediately if they don’t reverse this today,” Scott Adams noted on a Jack Posobiec tweet. The outpouring of user outrage and cancellations came after reports about PayPal’s policy, which was set to go in effect in November.
According to the DailyWire, “The new policy update from PayPal will permit the firm to sanction users who advance purported ‘misinformation’ or present risks to user ‘wellbeing’ with fines of up to $2,500 per offense.”
“The financial services company, which has repeatedly deplatformed organizations and individual commentators for their political views, will expand its ‘existing list of prohibited activities’ on November 3,” the report added. “Among the changes are prohibitions on ‘the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials’ that ‘promote misinformation’ or ‘present a risk to user safety or wellbeing.’ Users are also barred from ‘the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory’.”
According to the policy change memo, the fund seizures would be made at the “sole discretion” of PayPal, which would unilaterally inflict purported “damages” — including the withdrawal of $2,500 “debited directly from your PayPal account” per each offense.
As pointed out by Twitter user, PayPal’s CEO Dan Schulman was featured at the World Economic Forum discussing the purported “thing that separates good companies from great ones: Trust.”
CEO of PayPal was featured in a WEF article back in January 2022 about… “Trust.” The irony is endless. pic.twitter.com/VAcsVLHuZt
— Kate (@KateTalksTruth) October 8, 2022
Schulman boasted to the World Economic Forum about all the Woke ‘do-gooderism’ that his alleged financial services company has ‘achieved.’
“We’ve taken a lot of positive stands: backing immigration reform; providing access to interest-free loans to help federal workers when they were furloughed during the government shutdown in 2019; and investing more than $500 million since 2020 to close the racial wealth gap by supporting Black-owned small businesses and creating an economic opportunity fund to invest in community banks and credit unions serving underrepresented communities,” Schulman said.
“Some is about things you stop doing.,” he went on. “For example, we’ve barred hate groups, the Proud Boys on the far right and Antifa on the far left, from using our platform. The difficult part there is identifying what is hatred and what is freedom of speech. Nobody teaches you that.”
“But the older I’ve gotten and the longer I’ve been in CEO jobs, the more I’ve realized that if mission and values are what guide your toughest decisions, it’s not actually that hard,” he continued. “When North Carolina passed a bathroom law in 2016 that discriminated against LGBTQ citizens, I immediately made the decision that we were going to withdraw our plans to open an operations center there in a week. Because that was a clear assault against people for their gender identity and their sexual orientation. Now, I didn’t realize how much it was going to thrust us into the national spotlight, that I couldn’t go into a bathroom for a while without security searching the stalls first. But it was clear to me that this was a case of putting our values into action, and honestly, we had no choice but to make that decision.”
PayPal’s CEO has made it clear that the company, and its sister company Venmo, cannot be trusted. Americans who value the right for everyone to live in a free society should cancel their accounts. And for everyone who already canceled their accounts, those should stay canceled.
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The post PayPal Releases Urgent Statement Amid Massive Blowback to Policy Fining Users $2,500 Per Offense for ‘Misinformation’ appeared first on Becker News.