CRASH: PayPal Demands A Competitor

When a business commits serial stupidity, it is sending a message out to the market; "WE DEMAND COMPETITION".  PayPal is telling the world loud and clear that someone needs to fill the void between its corporate ears.

And, trust me, help is on the way.

Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs blog is strong medicine.  She is a take-no-prisoners blogger of the distinctly pro-Israeli, conservative, American exceptionalism stripe.  She, like a lot of bloggers and commentators, loathes Islamism, and will not back down from seeing and portraying it as an existential threat to Western civilization.  Which is what it is.

PayPal has a "Acceptable Use Policy":

Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive
payments for items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the
financial exploitation of a crime.

Geller generates some revenue for her extra-blogospheric work using PayPal (such as bus ads that were approved by the NY authorities).   Or, rather she did.  PayPal has weighed her in the balance, and found her wanting.  They've cut her off, citing their "Acceptable Use Policy".

Only looking at the terms PayPal publishes, that seems internally inconsistent.  Islamists are not a race.  I doubt very seriously that Ms. Geller would have the least degree of hate for any Islamist that forsook their jihad against the Enlightenment and the culture that sprang from it.  I think the opposite to be true, in fact.  I have not seen anything from Geller calling for violence, outside of support for our national policy.  I have never seen anything remotely suggesting she sought to financially exploit a crime.


There is, however, another area of inconsistency at work here; PayPal seems not to have much trouble "Acceptable Use"-wise with sites and individuals BESIDES Geller.  Many of these are pretty clearly sites that promote racial hatred...in some cases, toward the Jews.  Some of them are strongly promoting violence.


That seems to leave us with Geller's opinions as "items", and the finding by PayPal that those opinions are "hate".  That is very thin ice on which to skate for a business.  PayPal is, of course, free to associate with whom it will.  When you publish a policy though, you limit your freedom voluntarily, and you may be held liable for what you do in violation of your published terms.  So, PayPal is free...to a point...to determine who it will serve.  Just as Hearst was free to use Hellin Thomas...or not.

But, as noted here in several posts here, all actions have consequences.  PayPal may be free to deal with Geller, according to its own terms, but we are also free to deal with PayPal or not.  There are people out there who can start another PayPal, or people who have one now.  This is a prime opportunity to exploit the PayPal opening.  They demand it.