WTF the going on here?
What have Paypal done?
Am I suppose to know who Toby Young is?
Should I care that OP has closed their Paypal account in protest about whatever is going on?
"PayPal has shut down the account of the Free Speech Union, an organisation which defends gender-critical academics and people who have lost work for expressing opinions.
The US payments company shut down the accounts of the Free Speech Union, its founder Toby Young, and his opinion and news website the Daily Sceptic with no clear explanation last week, The Telegraph can reveal.
Mr Young said he suspected the action was driven by political motives and was a “sinister form of cancel culture”.
He was told last week that PayPal was shutting down the accounts because of violations of PayPal’s “Acceptable Use Policy”. He is unaware of any possible ways he or the organisation could have breached the policy, which lists banned transactions such as those which are illegal or support ponzi schemes.
A spokesman for PayPal said it could not comment on individual customers, but said that PayPal “regularly assesses activity against our long-standing Acceptable Use Policy and will discontinue our relationship with account holders who are found to violate our policies”.
He added: “Achieving the balance between protecting the ideals of tolerance, diversity and respect for people of all backgrounds and upholding the values of free expression and open dialogue can be difficult, but we do our best to achieve it.”
The Free Speech Union, founded by Mr Young two years ago, has recently called on the Government to ensure children aren't politically indoctrinated at school, citing the teaching of “radical gender theory” through Drag queen story hours in schools.
The organisation has helped to defend people who claim they have lost work for expressing opinions, for example Gillian Philip, the author who said her contract was terminated because she stood up for JK Rowling on Twitter amid a row over transgender rights. It has also challenged universities that have “no-platformed” gender-critical academics.
Mr Young said: “If PayPal had shut down just one of these accounts it’s conceivable it could be because it had violated the company’s Acceptable Use Policy. But it closed all three accounts within minutes of each other, suggesting there’s a more sinister reason.
“I suspect it’s because in reality PayPal doesn’t value free expression and open dialogue or the people and organisations that stand up for those principles.”
He said he suspected the closure of the Free Speech Union’s account could have been a response to complaints from trans rights activists.
Earlier this year, PayPal shut down the account of Colin Wright, an American evolutionary biologist, for unclear reasons, after he received a backlash from activists over his arguments that biological sex is real and there are only two sexes.
PayPal also reportedly suspended the accounts of two anti-war US media organisations, Consortium News and Mint Press, without a clear explanation.
The move by PayPal to shut down the Free Speech Union’s account has caused a significant challenge for the organisation because about a third of its 9,500 members have their recurring membership fees processed by PayPal.
The union charges members £2.49 a month and accepts donations.
Mr Young said: “Withdrawing financial services from dissidents and non-conformists and those who dare to defend them is the new frontline in the ongoing war against free speech.
“The Free Speech Union will be lobbying the Government to put new laws in to prevent companies like PayPal demonetising organisations and individuals because their employees disapprove of their views.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/20/paypal-shuts-accounts-free-speech-union/
Mmmk, so I kind of know what woke narrative might be being referred to and that the bender critical views are probably gender critical views.
But there's more to it than that...
"PayPal has been urged to release confiscated funds from British organisations as over 30 Tory MPs and peers accuse the online transfer giant of launching an “orchestrated” and “politically motivated” attack on groups that champion free speech.
The US payments company has come under fire after shutting down the accounts of the Free Speech Union, its founder Toby Young, and his opinion and news website the Daily Sceptic, with no clear explanation last week.
PayPal also froze the accounts of the parent campaign group UsForThem, which fought to keep schools open during the pandemic - but in a sign that the company was backtracking amid the growing fallout, their account was unfrozen on Friday evening.
Dozens of MPs - including Michael Gove and David Davis, both former ministers, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the ex-Conservative Party leader, and Sir Graham Brady, the 1922 committee chairman - are now calling on ministers to intervene.
In a letter to Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Business Secretary and Andrew Griffith, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, they noted that the “common theme” among organisations and individuals that have had their account closed is that they are all prominent “champions of free speech” who have expressed “critical, non-conforming views on lockdown policies”.
They go on to say: “It is therefore hard to avoid construing PayPal’s actions as an orchestrated, politically motivated move to silence critical or dissenting views on these topics within the UK.”
The letter to ministers came amid a mounting backlash against the US payments giant, which saw several celebrities announce they are deleting their accounts in protest. Sharron Davies, the former Olympic swimmer and BBC presenter, became the latest to exit the platform saying: “I don’t believe tech companies should decide who has a voice.”
For all of you either getting excited or cross depending on if you like free speech & believe in fair sport for those who ARE biologically female. I chose to close my PayPal I was not booted off. I don’t believe tech companies should decide who has a voice! That’s for governments
https://t.co/j7QQYjSMw3
— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) September 24, 2022
She was joined by Matt le Tissier, football pundit and former England player, who said on Twitter: “Good riddance to tin-pot dictators.”
And Jack Dee, the comedian, said he was cancelling his account on the basis that “Big Tech companies that feel they can bully people for questioning mainstream groupthink don’t deserve anyone’s business”.
The letter to ministers, sent on Saturday night, had 42 signatories in total including 21 Tory MPs and 15 Tory peers. as well as four cross-bench peers, a Labour peer and a Labour MP.
They said the Government should demand an explanation from PayPal for its actions and release the donations from the organisations whose funds it has “confiscated unfairly and without justification”.
Molly Kingsley, co-founder of UsForThem, said: “It cannot be the case that in a liberal democracy, private financial service providers are able to withdraw critical services for political ends and at the swish of a pen silence dissenting view. We are calling on the Government and the regulators to urgently introduce appropriate legislative safeguards.”
Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, called for new laws to prevent financial services companies from engaging in “political censorship”.
He said: “The withdrawal of banking services from an individual or an organisation because they aren’t toeing the right political line is something you’d expect to happen in Communist China or North Korea, but not in a supposedly free country.”
On Saturday night, Government sources confirmed that officials intend to contact PayPal and demand an explanation about why certain accounts have been frozen.
They said they are aware that a series of accounts have been suspended and that so far no explanation has been given for the rationale behind this.
A spokesman for PayPal said they do not comment on individual accounts, adding: “PayPal regularly assesses activity against our long-standing acceptable use policy and will discontinue our relationship with account holders who are found to violate our policies.”
After reviewing the UsForThem case, PayPal decided that their campaign did not amount to misinformation and this led to their account being unfrozen.
However, it is understood that the decisions to suspend the Free Speech Union and Daily Sceptic account still stand and there are no immediate plans to reverse this."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/20/paypal-shuts-accounts-free-speech-union/
So now you know why the OP has decided to close their Paypal account.
And here's another article about it, this one is written by Toby Young:
"Ithought one of the benefits of being cancelled – I lost five positions in quick succession at the beginning of 2018 – is that it immunises you from being cancelled again. After all, what more dirt could be thrown at me? The offence archaeologists did such a thorough job four years ago, sifting through everything I’d said or written dating back to 1987, that there was nothing left to dig up. But it turns out that was naive. Last week I got cancelled again.
The instrument of my downfall was PayPal, the technology company that supports online money transfers and operates as a payment processor for online businesses, auction sites and so on. At around 2 p.m. last Thursday I received an email from PayPal informing me that the company was ‘initiating closure’ of my personal account because I was ‘in violation’ of its ‘Acceptable Use Policy’. I looked up that policy and it covers a multitude of sins, but no clue was offered as to which one I’d committed. ‘If you have money in your PayPal balance, we’ll hold it for up to 180 days,’ it said. That was a bit annoying because I have over £600 in the account, but it wasn’t the end of the world. I mainly use it for receiving payments from European magazines I write for occasionally.
Then it got serious. Within a few minutes of contacting me, PayPal sent the same message to the Daily Sceptic, the news publishing website I’ve been running for two-and-a-half years, and the Free Speech Union, the organisation I set up in 2020 to defend people threatened with cancellation. In both cases, PayPal was shutting down the accounts for the same reason – breaching the Acceptable Use Policy. No further details. To give you a sense of how serious this is, about a quarter of the Daily Sceptic’s donor revenue is processed by PayPal and about a third of the Free Speech Union’s 9,500 members pay their dues via PayPal.
‘So what?’ you might think. Just email all those people and advise them to use a different payment processor. I’ll do that, obviously, but it’s inevitable that some won’t bother – some of them won’t even open the emails – and the resulting loss of revenue will be hugely disruptive. The Daily Sceptic has four people on the payroll and the Free Speech Union has 15 and they both operate on tight margins. I was relying on PayPal to deliver the service it promised to perform when I first signed up and which I’ve been paying for until now (1.5 per cent commission on every transaction). I had no idea it could just whisk the rug out from under you, with no notice and without having to provide any proper explanation. In my case, the excuse offered was obviously bogus. How could all three accounts be guilty of ‘violating’ the same policy within minutes of each other?
I tried appealing to customer services and got nowhere. I wrote to Vincent Belloc, the vice president of PayPal UK, and didn’t get a reply. I contacted the ‘corporate communications team’ in New York and London, telling them I was planning to write about what had happened and asking for a comment. Nothing. As so often when dealing with these Silicon Valley behemoths, it’s impossible to hold them to account. There is no redress if they decide to terminate your account.
So why has PayPal cancelled me? I can only guess, but I suspect it’s because someone at the company isn’t very keen on free speech. I did some googling and discovered that numerous organisations and individuals with dissident political views have had their accounts closed by PayPal recently, particularly on the three issues you’re not allowed to be sceptical about: the lockdown policy and other Covid restrictions, the mRNA vaccines, and the ‘climate emergency’.
The Daily Sceptic frequently publishes articles on those subjects and the Free Speech Union may have fallen foul of another taboo – defending people who’ve got into trouble with HR departments for refusing to declare their gender pronouns. PayPal, like most Big Tech companies, has sided with the trans-rights activists on that issue. A journalist called Colin Wright, an ex-academic with a PhD in biology and an outspoken critic of the view that sex is a social construct, lost his account in June.
I expect the Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union will survive this attempt to demonetise them, but it’s left me wanting to do something about this insidious new way of cancelling people. As the switch to a cashless society gathers speed, we need to put some laws in place to protect people from being punished by companies like PayPal for saying something their employees disapprove of."
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-has-paypal-cancelled-me-
And here's some general shit from GB News about it all:
https://www.gbnews.uk/gb-views/paypal-cancelling-the-free-speech-union-account-shows-we-need-a-discussion-about-the-control-big-tech-giants-have-over-british-civil-society-says-dan-wootton/369970
(This is a genuine Teffers style Wall of Text™)
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