Payment giant Paypal is under scrutiny due to its now-defunct policy which could’ve let the company pull $2,500 from user accounts for promoting ‘misinformation,’ driving the need for wide crypto adoption because ‘we should have the complete rights to our own money.’
The retracted policy stated people who post or publish hate speech or misinformation “may subject you to damages, including liquidated damages of $2,500.00 U.S. dollars per violation, which may be debited directly from your Paypal account.”
The payments company cautioned that prohibited actions include “the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials” that “promote misinformation.”
Naturally, the general public didn’t receive the revelation well, and the social media rage began criticizing Paypal’s choice to apply the new user agreement. People started closing their accounts urging otters to do the same.
David Marcus, CEO of Lightspark and former president of PayPal, seemed visibly enraged like the entire public, and tweeted “A private company now gets to decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with. Insanity.”
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and a former co-founder of PayPal, replied “agreed” to Marcus’ post.
The crypto community obviously chimed in noting how important it is to have custody of your own funds and how these big firms are taking advantage of people like they own these users’ money.
The backlash from the public towards Paypal escalated and later a Paypal official told the National Review that the user policy notice that was widely circulated was an error.
The official noted “An AUP notice recently went out in error that included incorrect information. Paypal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy. Our teams are working to correct our policy pages. We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused.”
The community however continued to criticize Paypal saying the company only backtracked now because they didn’t expect this much backlash from the public.
There have been multiple instances where Paypal has exerted authority with its censorship measures. The most notable one is Paypal barring WikiLeaks from accepting donations in 2010, forcing Julian Assange and WikiLeaks to turn to cryptocurrency.
Also Read: PayPal Allows Transfer of Crypto to and from External Wallets
