The irony of the Free Speech Union’s PayPal account being shut down is that it proves we are in need of the union more than ever.
The online payment company shut down the FSU’s account (thus making it more difficult for people to donate) without any clear explanation as to why it did so. The same was done to its founder, Toby Young, and his online newspaper, the Daily Sceptic.
The shame is, PayPal is an innovative tech company that has made transferring money almost seamless for millions across the world. You can donate money to an organisation within seconds; there’s no faff trying to find your credit card, or having to re-type your details for the twentieth time that week. It’s a brilliant service that has made life easier for many people, businesses and charities. PayPal is not a political company, it’s a tech company worth over $102bn, so why have they been banning other organisations from using their services?
Although PayPal said they couldn’t comment on the decision, they did proclaim that they “weren’t discriminatory”, but is this really true?
Is it unclear whether they shut down these accounts simply because they disagreed with what the FSU and Toby Young stand for. Although PayPal hasn’t clarified what exactly FSU and Toby Young did wrong, it appears that they must have breached their acceptable use policy. This includes myriad of things but the most prominent are hate speech and “misinformation” on topics such as the COVID vaccine.
Hate speech is one thing (although it seems that anything can be deemed offensive and hateful now) but “misinformation” about topics being a breach of policy takes us down a dark and sinister path.
Misinformation is a term that is often used to label content that goes against the elite or prevailing ‘groupthink’ point of view. Questioning mainstream thought is unacceptable, and it breaches Big Tech’s policy, thus you can (and often will) be shut out.
When the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine came out, it seemed to be a saving grace. The mainstream view was that everyone must have their vaccine, and if you don’t, you’re selfish. And absolutely do not question its efficiency.
When murmurs of rising numbers of blood clots with patients who had recently had the vaccine arose, many were discredited. This was “misinformation”. They then did discover links with that vaccine and blood clots, and they discontinued it, not rolling it out for the booster jabs. Questioning a prevailing narrative is beneficial for society to develop and evolve; it cannot be disregarded as “misinformation” and thus cancelled.
Toby Young and the FSU is worryingly not the only target in PayPal’s sight. UsForThem, a parent’s group who fought to keep open schools during lockdown, also got cancelled by PayPal “due to the nature of their activities”.
Not only that, but they are currently withholding their funds. People who believed in their cause could no longer easily send them a small or large donation via PayPal, which indeed must have stunted its growth. PayPal had decided, along with the (seemingly) dominant view, that lockdowns could not be questioned, thus UsForThem was acting against what they believed in and so spreading ‘misinformation’. Iain Mansfield, director of research at Policy Exchange, put what PayPal is doing fittingly: “This is a company taking deliberate action to silence and suppress lawful political groups with whom they disagree.”
Thankfully, there has been a trending stance on Twitter with the hashtag ‘NoWayPal’, where people in solidarity are closing their PayPal accounts in reaction to what the company is doing. The fact that access to your money depends on what Big Tech thinks of you is a terrifying thought. PayPal should let the market decide which organisations are worthy of donations, not themselves deciding on the market’s behalf.
