Tag: paypal

PayPal Blocks Multiple Alternative Media Figures Critical Of US Empire Narratives

In what appears to be yet another escalation in Silicon Valley’s redoubled efforts to quash dissident voices since the beginning of the Ukraine war, PayPal has just blocked the accounts of multiple alternative media voices who’ve been speaking critically against official US empire narratives. These include journalist and speaker Caleb Maupin, and Mnar Adley and Alan MacLeod of MintPress News.

Just the other day MintPress published an excellent article by MacLeod titled “An Intellectual No-Fly Zone: Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm” documenting the many ways skepticism of the US government’s version of events in this war is being suppressed by Silicon Valley megacorporations, including financial censorship via the demonetization of YouTube videos that don’t regurgitate the imperial line on Ukraine.

Today, both MintPress and MacLeod have been banned from using the payment service that many online content creators have come to rely on to help crowdfund their work.

Keep reading

IRS Watching Your $600+ Payments To Venmo, PayPal, Others

President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress passed a new rule that requires payment companies and cash applications such as Venmo and PayPal to report $600 or more of payments to the Internal Revenue Services.

The law was included in the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, which was passed with only Democratic votes through budget reconciliation to avoid the Senate filibuster. The new rule took effect at the beginning of this month.

The requirement covers payments received for good and services. The rule would apply to payment services like PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, Cash App and others.

Keep reading

PayPal Working with ADL to Financially Blacklist and Spy on ‘Extremists’

PayPal took its first step towards suppressing dissent when it banned the account of Julian Assange in 2011. In recent years it has targeted the right, blacklisting the free speech video platform BitChute, Republican congressional candidate and activist Laura Loomer, and the conservative street artist Sabo.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a liberal digital rights organization, has opposed the rise of financial censorship for over a decade. In 2018, the organization warned that banks, payment processors, and credit card companies were becoming “de facto internet censors.”

Keep reading