PayPal Bans Alex Jones And InfoWars (#GotBitcoin?)

Alex Jones can add PayPal Holdings Inc. to the list of companies ending ties to the conspiracy theorist and his InfoWars website for hateful and intolerant behavior. PayPal Bans Alex Jones And InfoWars (#GotBitcoin?)

“We undertook an extensive review of the InfoWars sites, and found instances that promoted hate and discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions that run counter to our core value of inclusion,’’ the payments company said. “We believe that hatred and discrimination have no place in our democratic society and, we do not support this conduct.’’

PayPal joins a variety of other technology companies, including Apple Inc., Facebook Inc.. Google’s YouTube and Twitter Inc., in banning Jones and InfoWars from their platforms, saying he promotes hate speech, bullying and harassment.

Jones is known for spreading false allegations such as that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was a hoax.

PayPal took similar action in August 2017 to stop processing payments for groups associated with the hate march in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The San Jose, California-based company declined further comment on its action against InfoWars.

Paypal Bans Donations To WikiLeaks, Dec. 4th. 2010

The decision follows the publication by WikiLeaks of thousands of leaked US embassy cables.

WikiLeaks accused PayPal, which is based in America, of bowing to US Government demands to withdraw its service. PayPal is one of several methods that enables WikiLeaks to receive donations and finance its operations.

On Wednesday, Amazon ended an agreement to host WikiLeaks, forcing the website to switch to a Swiss internet address on Friday. It had also been dropped by another US internet service provider.
In a posting on WikiLeaks’ Twitter page, the website announced: “PayPal bans WikiLeaks after US government pressure.”

A statement on the PayPal site said: “PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action.”

The internet publisher directed users to http://www.wikileaks.ch after the wikileaks.org site on which it had published classified US government information vanished from view for about six hours.

PayPal General Counsel John Muller said: “While the account will remain restricted, PayPal will release all remaining funds in the account to the foundation that was raising funds for WikiLeaks.

According to The Washington Post, there was about $80,000 in the account.

Muller went on to defend the permanent closure of the account by saying the online payment site is “required to comply with laws around the world.”

“Ultimately, our difficult decision was based on a belief that the WikiLeaks website was encouraging sources to release classified material, which is likely a violation of law by the source,” he continued.

The letter didn’t cite any specific US statutes WikiLeaks was violating.

Muller’s argument made no mention of organizations such as the International Tibet Network, which continues to solicit donations through PayPal even though some of their activities almost surely violate Chinese laws.

Over the past few days, other financial services, including Visa, MasterCard, and the Swiss bank Post Finance, have also suspended services to Wikileaks and Assange.

The move has prompted criticism on Twitter and elsewhere by users who point out that Visa and MasterCard still permit payments to Ku Klux Klan groups but not to a group that so far has been charged with no crime.

Distributed denial of service attacks by people sympathetic to Wikileaks soon took out MasterCard and were also reported against EveryDNS.net, which suspended one of WikiLeaks domain names.

Amazon said Wikileaks had failed to adhere to its terms of service. Amazon said on its website: “It’s clear that Wikileaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content.

Further it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that Wikileaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy.” Amazon said on its website.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, is believed to be in hiding in the south east of England. He is wanted in Sweden over alleged sex crimes.

Updated: 11-14-2019

Bitcoin Fixes This: PayPal Cuts Payouts to Over 100,000 Pornhub Models

Bitcoin (BTC) is being championed as the solution to a new payment crisis affecting the adult entertainment website Pornhub. In a blog post on Nov. 14, Pornhub revealed that payment processor PayPal had abruptly stopped servicing its models.
Pornhub hits out at attack on “livelihoods”

Previously, models throughout the world received payouts via PayPal, which has not publicly stated why it cut them out of its platform.

“We are all devastated by PayPal’s decision to stop payouts to over a hundred thousand performers who rely on them for their livelihoods,” the blog post reads.

Pornhub is now using direct funds transfer alternatives, which models must set up themselves. The website began a deal with cryptocurrency project Verge (XVG) last year, while users can purchase products with various cryptocurrencies via Pornhub’s partnership with merchant gateway PumaPay.
Models unaware of cryptocurrency

The debacle is just the latest in a string of skittish moves from PayPal, which has become well known for its seemingly arbitrary account shutdowns.

In each case, Bitcoin proponents highlight the benefit of using censorship-resistant cryptocurrency instead. Bitcoin transactions cannot be canceled or denied by a third party since they are peer-to-peer.

Pornhub’s problems, despite the Verge deal, nonetheless put the lack of overall knowledge of cryptocurrency in the spotlight.

“Crypto, personal portal… LOL. I don’t understand what that even is. I’m cool with just direct deposit into my bank account,” Shyla Jennings, a prominent model on the site, responded to the news on Twitter.

Jennings added she did not use PayPal herself, as the service had had her “blacklisted for years.”