Breaking: Gab Upset by the same treatment they promise in their legal terms: "Termination
We may terminate your access to and use of the Services, at our sole discretion, at any time and without notice to you." [1]
Most companies have something in their ToS to the effect of "we can do whatever we want" -- that doesn't mean they're all the same. For example, Stripe and PayPal both have essentially the same ToS. But only PayPal has so many "banned for no reason" horror stories that there are multiple websites dedicated to cataloging them.
Paypal generally doesn't pull out of business unless its illegal. It was a bad move by paypal because 800000 gab users who did nothing wrong are now inconvenienced
We dont live in a 3rd world country where free speech is illegal. Or a middle east country where you get stoned to death for being gay. We live in free speech america.. Gab did nothing wrong, and you pointing to the laws of 3rd worlds is a red herring
This is neither a right in any theoretical system of human rights I've seen, nor is there any practical way to disassociate people from a basic human emotion.
In the context of this conversation people don't have the right to disassociate with anyone they don't like. I'm not being "cute" about hate, and whatever you think hate is isn't relevant to my point. People simply do not have the right to do business with others chosen entirely from their own personal discretion. The US government can and does force businesses to provide services, at the risk of that business's existence, to unsavory entities.
I don't know what Gab is, or what its typical content is like, though I'm getting an idea from the replies to this tweet. But the principle of free speech has nothing to do with the right of a company to use Paypal's services. It's to do with the right of individuals to say what they like without government incarcerating or otherwise harming them or their ability to speak.
Paypal banned me when I was 12 for using a 20% off coupon to buy a pencil from myself for $500. Let me keep the $100 after holding the $500 for 6 months. Best CD ive ever had.
>But only PayPal has so many "banned for no reason" horror stories
There is always a reason. The reason this time is probably:
"Gab is a popular gathering place for alt-right activists and white nationalists whose views are unwelcome or banned on other social media platforms. Early members included the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website. Other well known users have included controversial media personalities Alex Jones and Carl Benjamin."
That's pretty dismissive and combative. From a neutral perspective, it looks like one of the intrinsic characteristics of Gab is that it is host to more hateful expression than other platforms. Can you give something in the way of an explanation as to why you're so confident that can't be the real reason?
Did Gab pick the hate groups, or did the hate groups pick Gab? What if you created a platform for expression, and it was infiltrated by a certain type of audience that's generally repulsive. Should we sink your project?
Surely this argument is beneath you. Infiltrated? So it's unwanted by you? What efforts are you making to prevent it? Pretty easy to demonstrate that you won't tolerate that behavior. Gab has never done anything remotely suggesting these are unwanted accounts tarnishing their good name.
Gab is just a clone of Twitter. I might well agree that Twitter-type services are more prone to "hateful expression" than longer form writing, but given the relative sizes of Twitter and Gab you can certainly find far more hate on Twitter. And no, Twitter certainly don't crack down on it systematically, not when it's the kind of hate fashionable on the west coast.
Sounds like a good thing to ban, but I'm still wary of the exact method. ('we can ban anyone' clauses, and the idea of generic payment providers being the arbiters)
I think you're confusing the fact that people have repeatedly argued that Gab isn't white supremacist twitter with the notion that it has somehow been established that it isn't. But, of course, it is. Even Voat has better bona fides than Gab.
Later
It's probably not just a coincidence that every time this comes up on HN, there's a Popehat thread about Gab at the same time. Here's Ken today with a telling citation to Gab's own Twitter account from earlier this year:
Unless you can provide evidence where gab says they are Nazis, they support Nazis, or you've found some advertising materials there they advertise to Nazis, you're not winning this argument. Unless you're petty enough to keep having my comments flagged.
1- https://gab.com/about/tos
reply