If you’re a regular donor to the Daily Sceptic and got an email from me in the small hours of the morning telling you that PayPal had closed our account and urging you to set up a new donation with a link to our donate page, don’t panic. It wasn’t a scam. PayPal really has shut down our account and the email really was from me.
I’ll tell you the full story in a moment, but just to be clear – this won’t affect the majority of people making regular donations, just those whose donations are processed by PayPal. So unless you’ve received an email from me with instructions about how to donate without using PayPal, please don’t cancel your recurring donation. I repeat: Please don’t cancel your donation. This just applies to people whose donations are being processed by PayPal and I’ve written to all of you.
The first I heard about this was on Thursday afternoon last week when I received a notification from my personal PayPal account informing me that it was being shut down because I’d violated the company’s ‘Acceptable Use Policy’. I looked at that policy and it covers things like fraud and money laundering so my first thought was it must be a mistake. Then, a few minutes later, I got another notification, this one from the Daily Sceptic’s PayPal account. That, too, had been shut down and for the same reason. Eh? That was odd. Then, another email, this one from the Free Speech Union’s PayPal account. Same story – the Acceptable Use Policy.
Now call me a cynic, but the chances of all three accounts violating the same policy within minutes of one another struck me as a bit implausible. Was something else going on?
I contacted customer services and asked what I’d done, exactly, on my personal account that ran afoul of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy. I’ve had it since 2013 and use it, at most, four times a year, usually to receive money from a Swiss weekly magazine I occasionally write for.
The person I spoke to said she had no idea, but if I wanted I could “escalate“ the matter and someone higher up the food chain would get back to me. I did that, obviously, and a couple of days later received a notification that my appeal has been unsuccessful. No explanation offered beyond the original one. Oh, and by the way, it would be keeping the money in that account for up to 180 days while it decided whether it was entitled to “damages” for my yet-to-be-explained breach of its Acceptable Use Policy.
It was the same story with the other two accounts. The only clue as to what might be going on was a message sent a couple of days ago from PayPal on the now closed Daily Sceptic account. The crucial passage read:
PayPal’s policy is not to allow our services to be used for activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance. We regularly assess activity against our long-standing Acceptable Use Policy and carefully review actions reported to us, and will discontinue our relationship with account holders who are found to violate our policies.
That message was a bit weird since it didn’t explicitly accuse the Daily Sceptic of promoting “hate, violence or racial intolerance”, or say that that was how we’d violated its precious policy. But it certainly implied it. To which my response is: How exactly? Or, more profanely: What the f*** are you talking about?
Even if the Daily Sceptic is guilty of that sin – and I defy anyone to point to an article we’ve published that promotes “hate, violence or racial intolerance” – why is that a reason to shut down my personal account or the FSU account? I still haven’t received any indication of why that’s happened. And for what it’s worth, I’ve written to the CEO of PayPal UK – Vincent Belloc, you can email him here – and the Corporate Affairs Department of PayPal US and PayPal UK (you can email them here and here), asking for some kind of explanation. No reply, obviously. Laughably, it says on the media contact page of PayPal‘s website above the email addresses: “Reporter on a deadline? Looking to book an interview or need a comment for a story?” The implication is that someone from its crack Corporate Affairs team will get back to you immediately. But I emailed them last Thursday and still haven’t heard back.
I suspect what’s really going on is that someone at PayPal – possibly the entire C-suite – doesn’t like what the Daily Sceptic or the Free Speech Union stands for. The company has form in this area. As Matt Taibbe wrote earlier back in May:
In the last week or so, the online payment platform PayPal without explanation suspended the accounts of a series of individual journalists and media outlets, including the well-known alt sites Consortium News and MintPress.
Those sites – Consortium News and Mint Press – are both left wing and they’re opposed to the war in Ukraine, which is presumably why PayPal cancelled them. Is the fact that the Daily Sceptic has published articles critical of the mainstream narrative about that war – including one in which we linked to Mint Press – the reason we’ve been cancelled? Seems a bit harsh, given that we’ve also published several articles defending Ukraine and its war effort and debunking some of the criticisms of the current Ukrainian regime.
A number of sites that have raised questions about the Covid vaccines have also been demonetised by PayPal in the past few months, including the U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance. Liz Evans, the head of the UKMFA, also had her personal PayPal account closed at the same time.
Is that fact that we’ve published data suggesting the mRNA vaccines aren’t as efficacious or as safe as we were initially led to believe why we’ve been cancelled?
Colin Wright, a former colleague of mine at Quillette and a staunch critic of trans rights dogma, was deplatformed by PayPal in June, presumably because some people in the company didn’t approve of his gender critical views. We’ve expressed similar views on the Daily Sceptic. Was that the issue?
My hunch is it’s all of the above. PayPal just doesn’t like free speech, which is why it has shut down the FSU account at the same time. There are five issues in particular where it’s completely verboten to express sceptical views and if you do you can expect to be cancelled, not just by PayPal but by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.: the wisdom of the lockdown policy and associated Covid restrictions, the efficacy and safety of the mRNA vaccines, Net Zero and the ‘climate emergency’, the need to teach five year-olds that sex is a social construct and the war in Ukraine. Dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy in any of those areas is no longer permitted.
This is the new front in the ongoing war against free speech: the withdrawal of financial services from people and organisations that express dissenting opinions on those topics. And not just those who express them, but those who defend them, too, like the FSU. That‘s what makes this an escalation in the war on free speech. Until now, companies like PayPal, GoFundMe, Patreon and CrowdJustice have only demonetised individuals and groups whose views they disapprove of. Now, PayPal has closed the account of an organisation that defends people’s right to free speech, without taking sides on the issues they’re speaking about. Even that is no longer allowed, according to this Silicon Valley behemoth.
Fear not, comrades. I may not be able to use PayPal again in a personal capacity, but I’m confident the Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union will survive. Yes, we’ll take a hit, but I hope people who still believe in free speech and the importance of casting a sceptical eye over the prevailing orthodoxy will show their support by joining or donating.
To join the FSU, click here. To donate to the FSU, click here. And to donate to the Daily Sceptic, click here.
And rest assured, PayPal has been expunged from all our payment systems. There‘s zero risk that if you give money to either of those organisations it will be pocketed by the fintech Death Star.
I thought about launching a campaign to get PayPal to restore its services to the three accounts, but then decided I didn’t want to have anything more to do with the wretched company. Even if it did a reverse ferret, what guarantee is there it won’t demonetise us again? No, from now on I will have nothing more to do with PayPal and if you’re a customer of the company I hope you’ll follow suit. (Here is a handy YouTube video explaining how to close your PayPal account.)
Stop Press: If anyone reading this is a donor to the Daily Sceptic or a member of the FSU based in Texas, please get in touch. In Texas, it’s illegal for large social media companies to ban users’ posts based on their political viewpoints. Is PayPal a social media company? Users can send messages to each other so… maybe. Worth exploring.
Stop Press 2: I spoke about this on GB News last night.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
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One could be forgiven for musing that this 21th century demonitisation of publications is not entirely disimilar to the 1930s book burning in Gernmany.
Closing my Paypal accounts has been immensely satisfying. Haven’t used mine for a while, but the list of past payees that gets emailed through to you confirms the apparent effectiveness of closing one’s Paypal account, as that message is spread far and wide among payees of all stripes.
We should not be surprised at this corporate fascism as Paypal is ultimately owned by eBay whose founder, Pierre Omidyar is one of THE worst of woke socialist billionaire activists, who set up The Intercept, which in turn red-pilled its own star founder, Glenn Greenwald.
An email to UK CEO [email protected] informing him we would be writing to our MPs to request an investigation into Paypal also feels like something worth doing…
And when you close your PayPal account do remember to ask them to delete your data (Sometimes GDPR has its uses). It also gives you the opportunity to tell them why you have closed your account…They got both barrels from me.
I saw that bit and wondered if there was a catch and left it. I wish I hadn’t now.
Just closed my PayPal account in solidarity.
Yes, this has been coming down the road for some time. I pay via DD and I’ve now cancelled my PP account with an appropriate message (I’m sure they couldn’t care less).
Thanks Toby for all you and your colleagues are doing – you must be over the target!
Just cancelled my Paypal account.
Thankfully my FSU membership was via DD however, I’ve now set up a regular donation to DS, I’m the process of transferring all regular PayPal payments to DD/SO, will cease using PayPal until all payments and refunds are settled. Final step: account closure. The problem is that 99.9% of the population either doesn’t know this is happening or doesn’t care (until it hurts them directly). So I doubt PayPal will even notice the account closures.
Ultimately, Toby is the common thread in this attack. They’ve gone after him personally by attacking two organisations he’s established and his personal account. It stands as no less than a financial assassination attempt on an individual. The question is, who instigated this? Was this a group decision or some twisted individual in the organisation, drunk on power? It must have been obvious to anyone there that to launch a three-pronged attack like this would attract public attention and clearly be seen to be orchestrated. Would this really be something that would get through a group meeting? I’m dubious. I suspect this is an individual within the organisation, who likely also oversaw the appeal.
It is beginning to look like the early shots in the war to eliminate cash are being fired.
Still no comments from Government / Truss.
My PayPal account has just been closed with a very clear message attached. Talking about Mastercard, I usually donate to the DS with a Mastercard Tesco Clubcard Credit Card. For the last few weeks I have been unable to book home deliveries, upon which I rely, as they have mysteriously been blocked from my account. I have a Delivery Saver Plan, Priority status and have shopped very regularly this way for far longer than I can remember. Tesco will not discuss my sudden exclusion from their delivery service with me and have cancelled my unusable delivery plan at my request without a word of regret. My neighbours are receiving Tesco slots offering all dates and Tesco’s call centre agrees this is the case. I have now changed providers. PayPal and Tesco are scoring own goals and seem completely indifferent to the losses incurred. Whether or not Tesco is connected to this policing of finance, I do not know – they will not give me a reason and I find that quite sinister. We have been warned.
Thanks for the post. Very disturbing.
Yes, it is disturbing. Can’t imagine how Toby must be feeling; bullying is the only word. Thanks for commenting.
I am not a regular subscriber but do donate occasionally.
I have just closed my PayPal account and written to Mr Bollocks as follows:
I am writing to you because of your policy of closing accounts where you disagree with the account owner.
I am thinking in particular of Toby Young, The Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union. I don’t agree with everything Toby says, but I completely agree that he has every right in the UK (and the USA – remember the 1st Amendment ?) to say things that are legal and factual, even if some thin-skinned snowflakes find them “hateful” such as saying that sex is immutable.
Thankfully I have not had need of the FSU, but they protect ordinary people from the overweening pretensions of large corporations and people like you.
I read the Daily Sceptic every day. Again there are some articles that I completely disagree with, but they are useful to read so you have a broad understanding of subjects like lockdown, vaccinations and the Ukraine war. I occasionally donate to this organisation and I have done so again today, but not using PayPal because I assume that my views as expressed above are… Read more »
Top class and thanks for posting.
In an article published on the WEF website dated 31 Jan 2022, titled ‘The thing that separates good companies from great ones: Trust’, Dan Schulman (President and Chief Executive Officer, PayPal) in response to the question “Does earning trust for a business today require more than simply offering reliability and products that deliver good value?” states:-
“Some is about things you stop doing. For example, we’ve barred hate groups, the Proud Boys on the far right and Antifa on the far left, from using our platform. The difficult part there is identifying what is hatred and what is freedom of speech. Nobody teaches you that.”
Clearly, Dan Schulman, needs teaching what freedom of speech is.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/business-trust-edelman-interview/
How long before this becomes more widespread at high street banks and credit card companies? Some of them have already done it with accounts of organisations deemed far right.
No more buying or selling on eBay then.
I’m not paying via Paypal and I ditched Halifax on AndyM’s advice two months ago. Anybody who cancels me; gets cancelled by me
This is an absolute disgrace. I joined the FSU yesterday and paid the subscription by Direct Debit. I am also exploring alternatives to PayPal for my company for our web shop payment provider. Keep up the good work Toby.
This is reminiscent of the days before Martin Luther King, the emancipation proclamation, the abolition of slavery and the beginning of women’s votes, where, respectively, black people were not allowed on buses, African people could be traded and worked to the bones on plantations, and women were restricted to the kitchen and child-rearing, any opinions proffered being ridiculed by chauvinistic men . Now we find that financial services like PayPal are only available to those who subscribe to a certain kind of woke ideology. This is discrimination’s finest hour.
Cancelled PayPal ages ago when they did this to the FLCCC.
My donations to DS have been ad hoc and will remain so as I hate direct debits, but now thinking seriously about joining FSU.
Hope Visa etc don’t go the same way; we need to keep cheques and analogue ways of payment (unless they’ve already gone the way of the dodo)
I paid for my IVM using something called WISE on the advice of the vendor; not sure whether that’s just international payments but we need to scout around for alternative systems.
IVM?
WISE?
I know I’m being lazy.
IVM – ivermectin
WISE – an alternative money transfer system to PP https://wise.com
I just got this email from ‘Us for them’ – it’s now apparent that this is a purge:
“We were completely taken aback a fortnight ago to learn that Paypal was discontinuing our services “due to the nature of [our] activities.” We originally decided against going public for fear of inviting further damaging consequences, but having now discovered other organisations for free speech and common sense have been impacted we feel taking this to you and to press is now the right thing to do. We refuse to let the bullies win.
No prior warning or meaningful explanation was given by Paypal, nor does there appear to be any way to challenge the decision. Despite them saying we could withdraw our remaining balance, this has proved impossible and Paypal is retaining money donated by you, our supporters, for a period of 180 days.
Given the number of other organisations who have been discontinued by Paypal over the last few days, it is extremely hard not to draw the conclusion that this is a politically
motivated cancellation of an organisation that in some way offends Paypal.
Given that our core mission is to advocate for children to be prioritised – a mission which is… Read more »
PayPal unpersoned me three weeks ago! I documented it in the updates section of my last post:
• https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/i/71065626/paypal-unpersoned-me
Welcome.
I hadn’t heard of the Daily Sceptic until I read the story about Paypal. I have now joined, donated and written to the 3 email addresses suggested, in addition to closing my Paypal account, which I was thinking of doing anyway( and writing to Vanguard). Thanks Paypal, but if you continue these misguided and virtue signalling policies I am not sure of your survival in the long run.
Welcome aboard.
Paypal have also cancelled the usforthem account – an organisation that seems only to be about highlighting the many damages done to children by the covid response.
I don’t think there is anywhere that questions the covid response better than this place.
What a fine and exemplary post.
“There are five issues in particular where it’s completely verboten to express sceptical views and if you do you can expect to be cancelled, not just by PayPal but by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.: the wisdom of the lockdown policy and associated Covid restrictions, the efficacy and safety of the mRNA vaccines, Net Zero and the ‘climate emergency’, the need to teach five year-olds that sex is a social construct and the war in Ukraine.”
Other taboo issues:
Race
Equality or otherwise of the sexes
Cancelled my PayPal account today (and told Belloc exactly why).
Just sent this message to PayPal:
“I will be closing my account today in response to your de-monetizing of a publication to which I have subscribed and read regularly, The Daily Sceptic. I understand you have also done the same to the Free Speech Union. Both of these organizations promote and are in favour of free speech online and as I understand it no explanation has been provided so far as to the closure of these accounts.
If it so happens you re-instate the accounts of the Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union, I would consider reopening an account with you. Otherwise, I see this as a part of a much wider attack on free speech online. There is nothing in the content of this website that remotely constitutes “harm”, only the elucidation of alternative viewpoints. It is important that the debate on current hot topics be kept open and accessible to all, regardless of their viewpoint. The de-monetizing of alternative sources of information such as these only serves to monopolize the provision of information and opinion to the public into the hands of a few large tech companies, and this demonetizing and attempts to silence opposition to the… Read more »
When PayPal was introduced years ago, it was unique in that it allowed on-line small payments between private individuals and between buyers and small vendors for whom credit card payment wasn’t possible or too expensive.
But technology has moved on with the advent of mobile banking in effect duplicating what PayPal offers. It’s days may be numbered and the way it is behaving, it is hastening its own demise.
That’s a mixed blessing. Guardian columnists have already mused about the immorality of payment providers like MasterCard supporting the far right (with far right being the usual code phrase for anyone who disagress with anything that’s dear to us). Anybody who’s a customer (or rather, serf) of any company that’s big enough that it can afford to loose customers with a sufficiently rotten business culture that intentionally driving them away is considered acceptable can principally fall victim to such a cancellation at any time. And that’s any company with an EDI policy as that’s always about the company serving employees and not customers.
The Guardian and its progressivist ilk are so far to the left that Leon Trotsky looks like Milton Friedman to them!
It is a disgrace
I pay by DD. I have now altered other subscriptions away from PayPal and have closed my PayPal account and told them why!
Related: I can find no way to manage my DS profile… change password, or change subscription. Can anyone point me in the right direction please?
Re managing your account – I wish I could help but DS is not an easy site to navigate. I had problems myself when the latest version of the site was updated. The problem with a lot of techie stuff is that administrators assume their subscribers are as IT fluent as they are when the reality is that many, like me are barely computer literate.
Try using the messaging service in the main site. Go on the ‘General Discussion’ and flag your message “attention Mods.”
Somebody will reply.
For a super quick response stick your message on here filled with expletives 😀😀
The site has be few bugs for sure but not surprising given that it only started as a blog. Its worth out weighs its flaws.
For all those looking to close their PayPal account in light of this, please take care that you’re really closing it. As usual, PayPal’s interface is obfuscatory and semi-broken.
I first went into my PayPal account on my phone browser, where closing the account seemed to be tied up with requesting personal data erasure. I went through the steps, including leaving a comment about why I wanted to close the account, and got an email (heading: “You’ve asked us to delete your data”) saying that I’ll have a response within a month.
I later logged into the account on my PC, and it was as in the video posted in the article: instant closure. Then I got another email, heading “Your PayPal account has been closed”.
The Ministry of Truth expands its frontiers!
If they cut off all avenues of electronic payment, I would literally resort to mailing cash to the DS, but when the Postal Services are in on it too I will drive it there myself! (Illustrative exaggeration, not a pledge!)
Free speech is a sacred, inalienable right, the internet is vast and people have free will. If content appears that you take offense to, nobody is forcing you to continue observing. Even if stuff is out there that is indisputably harmful, it is only so if you choose to give it attention. Freedom of speech is coupled with freedom of internet browsing, hence I defy anyone who claims they were literally “harmed” by something they found online.
As far as selective censorship (aka cancel culture) is concerned, one sided coin has no value. The erasure of what one platform considers “misinformation” leads to an unbalanced ubiquity of only one side of a debate. Internet research on a topic becomes meaningless when those charged with regulating content have a monopoly on truth.
I don’t have PayPal. I proudly belong to the FSU and donate monthly to the Daily Sceptic. When PayPal does this to an organisation we support, they are effectively accusing us all of the same ‘thought crimes’.
F*** them and the horse they rode in on! This is Soviet-style cancellation. What next? The banks shutting down even more people’s and organisations’ bank accounts, as we’ve already seen happening? Putting people who dissent on anti-terror watchlists?
The Tories’ failure to engage in the culture war going back to the 1980s and their complete acquiescence to fraudulent leftist oppression ideology is at the root of this. They can cut taxes all they like, but in a society where civilians are intimidated into silence by state organisations and globalist corporations in the grip of a cult, we need leaders to stand up against this culture of fear.
Johnson and his gangster administration, in locking us all up, made things an order of magnitude worse: every oppressive cultist now knows that a Government willing to imprison 64 million healthy people and send police out to assault freedom protestors, while letting race hate groups such as BLM and eco-terrorist groups such as XR destroy millions… Read more »
Paypal accounts being closed. It’s also reminded me to set up a Free Speech Union donation.
It might be an idea for a sidebar on the Daily Sceptic / FSU websites promoting companies who refuse to buckle to pressure from the cancel mob – banks / advertisers / service providers?