Why You Need to Stop Using PayPal

While PayPal has acted as “moral police” for over a decade,¹ in the last couple of years, its true purpose has crystallized. You probably thought PayPal was nothing more than an online payment service, but its true function is as a politically biased extremist-activist platform. PayPal’s chief executive Dan Schulman himself has publicly stated he was “born with social activism in my DNA.”²

Natural health organizations, antiwar journalists,^3,4 Christian organizations,⁵ anti-child-grooming organizations,⁶ nonprofits fighting vaccine mandates, organizations promoting early COVID treatments, alternative media⁷ and free speech unions⁸ are just a sampling of the individuals and groups that have had their PayPal accounts cancelled without warning.

PayPal Is Stealing Funds

Adding insult to injury, PayPal is also seizing any money you might have in your account on the day of deplatforming. As reported by independent journalist Matt Taibbi in May 2022:⁹

“In the last week or so, the online payment platform PayPal without explanation suspended the accounts of a series of individual journalists and media outlets, including the well-known alt sites Consortium News and MintPress …

Consortium editor Joe Lauria succeeded in reaching a human being at the company in search of details about the frozen or ‘held’ funds referenced in the note. The PayPal rep told him that if the company decided ‘there was a violation’ after a half-year review period, then ‘it is possible’ PayPal would keep the $9,348.14 remaining in Consortium’s account, as ‘damages.’

‘A secretive process in which they could award themselves damages, not by a judge or a jury,’ Lauria says. ‘Totally in secret’ … This episode ups the ante again on the content moderation movement … where having the wrong opinions can result in your money being frozen or seized. Going after cash is a big jump from simply deleting speech, with a much bigger chilling effect.”

PayPal’s Terms of Service: $2,500 Fine for Misinformation

On top of its deplatforming of political opponents and freezing their funds, PayPal recently threatened to fine users who express opinions that the company doesn’t agree with.^10,11,12 In other words, they’ve devised yet another way of stealing your funds, even if they don’t seize your entire account and close it down. As reported by the DailyWire November 7, 2022:¹³

“A 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.

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 notice, the determination of what could be deemed “misinformation” was to be at the sole discretion of PayPal, and the fine was to be “debited directly from your PayPal account.”

It’s worth noting that undefined “misinformation” wasn’t the only thing that could incur a fine; item (i) of the policy also included materials “otherwise unfit for publication.”¹⁴ Unfit? What could that be? Your guess is as good as mine.

Based on whom they’ve deplatformed and seized funds from so far, people who would see thousands of dollars swiped from their PayPal accounts as fines for wrongthink would include anyone who doesn’t care for global tyranny, censorship, government overreach, forced medical interventions, nuclear war, The Great Reset or pedophile grooming of children, just to name a few.

PayPal Temporarily Backtracked Amid Backlash

The updated terms of service resulted in thousands of users swiftly closing their accounts and taking their outrage to social media. PayPal’s former president, David Marcus, referred to the new terms as “Insanity,”¹⁵ and company stocks tanked nearly 12%.¹⁶

The backlash was so great, PayPal backtracked the very next day and apologized for causing “confusion,” claiming the new terms of service had been sent out “in error.” According to a PayPal spokesperson:¹⁷

“An [Accepted Use Policy] 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. We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused.”

Anyone who believes PayPal would send out new terms of service by mistake is truly gullible. A company like PayPal would have to go through multiple steps and levels of organization, including legal, in order to update its terms of service. No doubt it was approved and authorized at the highest levels.

It was not a mistake, and its sudden U-turn was merely for show (more on that in a moment). They realized they moved a bit too far, too fast, by tying the fine directly to “misinformation.” So, they backtracked.

Surprise! Fines Have Been on the Books for a Year Already

Unbeknownst to many, the $2,500 fine has actually been part of PayPal’s terms of service since September 20, 2021, at the latest — and it still remains. What!? Yes.

Here’s the deal: PayPal is not removing the possibility of robbing you of $2,500. The supposed “mistake” in language was the addition of “misinformation” as a fineable offense to an already existing policy that says they can issue fines of up to $2,500 for noncompliance with its use policy. In other words, they merely delayed the implementation of fines for misinformation specifically. Tech Dirt explains:¹⁸

“… PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy already includes a claim that if you violate its policy they can take $2,500 from your account. While PayPal walked back some of these newly announced changes (we’ll get to that in a second), the policy about the $2,500 has existed for at least a year.

Here’s the policy I just grabbed from their website, showing it was last updated on September 20, 2021, with the $2,500 ‘liquidated damages’ clause in there:

… Lots of sites reported that PayPal had retracted its plan to fine people $2,500 for misinformation, but the $2,500 amount is still in the policy. It’s just that the misinformation part is not going live — yet.

Of course, this raises another question: if the $2,500 liquidated damages thing has been in there since at least 2021… has PayPal ever actually done that? … The fact that the $2,500 damages clause is still in the PayPal policy today still seems like a pretty big deal.

Hiding the fact that a company might take $2,500 from you by burying it in an acceptable use policy no one is going to read seems like not a great thing, whether or not the policy includes ‘misinformation’ as a triggering event.”