At 5:30pm this evening, PayPal notified Toby that it has restored all three of the accounts it cancelled a couple of weeks ago – the accounts for the Daily Sceptic, the Free Speech Union and his personal account. In all three cases, the email read as follows:
We have continued to review the information provided in connection with your account and we take seriously the input from our customers and stakeholders. Based on these ongoing reviews, we have made the decision to reinstate your account. You should now be able to use your account in the normal way. We sincerely appreciate your business and offer our apologies for any inconvenience this disruption in service may have caused.
Toby has written about it for the Spectator.
Forgive me if I don’t jump for joy. Since PayPal dropped the bombshell on September 15th, I’ve been desperately trying to save the Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union from going under – “inconvenience” doesn’t begin to describe what I’ve been through. About a quarter of the regular donations people were making to the Daily Sceptic were being made via PayPal and about a third of the Free Speech Union’s members were paying their recurring membership dues using PayPal. We’ve had to write to all those people affected and plead with them to use a different payment processor, as well as redraw our annual budgets in anticipation of the revenue loss. So, telling me now that it was all a terrible mistake is too little, too late.
It clearly wasn’t a mistake, he notes. So what happened?
I’ve received thousands of emails and messages from people telling me they’ve closed their PayPal accounts in solidarity, so that may be the “input” the company is referring to. Another reason may be because the company’s efforts to cancel me have been universally condemned across the British media. Last week, Danny Kruger MP asked a question about it in Parliament and on Sunday a letter was sent to Jacob Rees-Mogg by 42 peers and MPs urging the Business Secretary to hold PayPal to account. It now looks as though a Bill currently going through parliament will be amended to make it illegal for financial services to engage in this kind of political censorship in future.
Toby says given he now knows PayPal can “demonetise you on a whim” it goes without saying he won’t be using it again. He says he will “still be devoting all my energies to lobbying the government to pass a law reining in companies like PayPal”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Free Speech Union has tweeted about this victory.
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Well done Toby – and all those that became involved and offered support in this situation – more power to your elbow.
If this doesn’t make you think twice about how bad an idea of a cashless society or Central Bank Digital Currency would be, then I don’t know what will.
I strongly suspect that that is why MPs, including Ministers/former Ministers were so quick to condemn Paypay. They know it has demonstrated the danger of a cashless society to people who are either apathetic about the plan or didn’t appreciate the danger.
Let’s hope so.
This is all fine, but what kind of a world is this where if you have the power and connections to kick up a fuss when a tech company bullies you and shuts you off, then you can get them to back down, but if you don’t then you’re completely at their mercy.
This is not acceptable. To me their backing down makes me have even less respect for them and despise them even more. They don’t even have the guts to stand up for what they claim to believe in. They are scumbags and bullies.
I agree particularly with your last paragraph and even more particularly the last sentence.
So if PayPal sincerely apologies for the inconvenience they caused, they will no doubt wish to pay substantial damages – to at least cover the loss of income they caused.
I for one will not be opening a new account with what is basically a FASCIST organisation.
Congratulations.
But this can (and has already) happened to a lot of people and smaller businesses with much less public clout. Eg, I personally know this has affected a lot of independent German music labels who were deemed to at odds with the AUP for publishing music deemed to be not ok by someone who believed to be entitled to do that. Hence, it’s nevertheless important that conditional on good political standing with the relevant (mostly American) non-authorities clauses of general service providers go the way of the dodo.
This is driven by politicians and political lobbying organizations, hence, it’s in essence state interference with legitimate businesses, in practice mostly people affiliated with the US democrats better like you, lest you’ll end up getting problems. These people shouldn’t try to police anything outside the US of A at all and should restrict themselves to the proper democratic procedures for settling political question in the USA. Considering that they keep claiming that democracy is so very dear to them, they certainly shouldn’t be undermining it because it’s also soo inconvenient when trying to fight the just cause.
PayPal have backed down because they were told to because this situation was going to move beyond the control of TPTB.
Toby is absolutely right in not letting the matter drop and he and we should use any opportunity to reignite this fire. If we can put a dent in PayPal’s bottom line so much the better.
Shame, shame, shame on those MP’s who kept their mouths shut throughout. Doubtless a few will attempt to convince the public that they support free speech and democracy, blah, blah, blah but the scumbags have got egg all over their faces and it’s too late to retrieve the situation.
Any MP turning up for an interview should be asked – “and what did you do in the PayPal / FSU debacle?”
Let’s make the buggers squirm.
They are reinstating his accounts because they did not anticipate that much backlash, and because they want to take the wind out of the sails of UK legislation against their censorship and monopoly.
It is even more essential now to fight for just that legislation.
Absolutely, and force the cowardly MP’s who said nothing to eat humble pie. Their voting record on this issue, if ever it is forced should forever remain on their CV.
Gutless wonders the majority.
Well done to Toby and co. for weathering the storm, and giving a loathsome tech monopoly a bloody nose, with hopefully heavier blows to be landed in due course.
And methinks damages must be due.
Essentially, though, nothing’s changed. The people who done this are still there, and will act again when their chance comes. Same with the lockdown and vaccine zealots.
Perhaps the biggest victory in this is that it will have woken more people up to the dangers of a cashless society.
Good news, yes. But I hope the FSU and the Daily Sceptic never resume their relationship with PayPal. I will never use that malignant fascist tool of Silicon Valley ever again.
Actions define a thing, words define what that entity wants you to believe it is. Have observed this since a child. Yet to see this disproved.
GREAT NEWS.
The power to shift convention trumps everything. There is a place for laws, but above all, we are all of us ruled by convention.
KEEP GOING, TOBY!
Get in!
Like Toby I wouldn’t be going near PayPal with a 10ft barge pole either.
Mr T and I punching the air here – well done Toby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PayPal should be required by Rees-Mogg to explain themselves. Their rationale should be in the public square. We need to be able to see what constitutes a breach of their T&Cs.
Couldn’t agree more. This cannot end just like this.
Definitely. Let us not consider the matter closed.
Seconded.
Unless this development is all part of a bigger plan by PP, I find it very hard to imagine that PP
did not appear to anticipate that there might be a backlash, and thousands of people closing accounts. Or is it part of the smoke and mirrors? As for the MPs speaking out: great that they are, and a step in the right direction, but I’m on such high alert now, that I can’t help thinking it’s calculated in some way.
“PayPal Backs Down”.
Yes. And I see that the Times muppets rode to the defence of Toby Young’s Free Speech Union too, despite having smeared btl commenters on Toby Young’s Daily Sceptic site as “anti-vaxxers” in a naked attempt to close down debate – and never mind that the Times muppets had failed in their own journalistic duty to instruct their journalist Oliver Wright (or any other of their journalists) to write a story like these ones from 2014 (also by Oliver Wright) on big pharma corruption as it relates to the past two years, as if they expect us to believe it has all suddenly gone away:
Big Pharma lobbyists exploit patients and doctors | The Independent | The Independent
Revealed: Big Pharma’s hidden links to NHS policy, with senior MPs saying medical industry uses ‘wealth to influence government’ | The Independent | The Independent
(Try reloading page to reveal whole story).
It is not enough for these people to back down. They need to stop treating us with contempt and acting as anti-truthers. And preferably they should go to jail. Let’s be clear, these are not minor offences and abuses.
Interestingly, there was a piece on Mark Steyn’s GB News show tonight about how the media has gone to pot since March 2020. The likes of the Times muppets can lie and smear as much as they like, but we know what they’re up to.
What these events have demonstrated emphatically is that all the pro-free speech billionaires out there need to gang together and build a completely alternative infrastructure. Parler is an example of what can happen if you create a free speech platform, but use existing infrastructure. It’s slowly happening, but if the extremists running the legacy corporations in Silicon Valley have decided to turn the screws harder, then the people who want an alternative infrastructure have got to put their noses to the grindstone!!
Eric July, the libertarian commentator, who has created his own comic book company, not as a rival to Marvel and DC, but in order to ignore them, has been targeted for cancellation by numerous big organisations, probably nudged by the likes of Marvel and DC. Eric turns around, laughs at them and shows them up on his YouTube channel – which he mirrors to Odysee, naturally!
This is a good moment to start lobbying the people with the money to work to build something separate, not as a rival to Silicon Valley, but as a completely separate entity, so Silicon Valley can go and rot in its own filth. Ultimately, there needs to be an ‘Internet 2.0’.
I think this story also highlights how much of the media is so incredibly partisan, in favour of the woke elite. The Guardian, for example, wouldn’t even dream of covering this story, just as they won’t cover Denmark’s withdrawal of Covid vaccines for the under 50s, the Israel smoking gun story about their cover up of serious adverse vaccine events, Hunter Biden’s laptop, anything that could shake the world view of their self-righteous readership. Similarly, they’ll talk eagerly about fake news and disinformation, but happily parrot nonsensical claims about climate change that can be categorically disproved with literally five minutes of research.
In the past, the Guardian would have placed a lefty spin on the story, caveated it with their natural dislike of people like Toby and the FSU, but they would have covered it, it is newsworthy, it says a lot about the era we are in. None of that matters any more.
Which reminds me, I need to cancel my PayPal account.
Yes, you do!
About the only nice thing I can say about PayPal right now is that they made it pretty easy to close my account. Go for it!
I’d like to think my little bit of “input” helped – writing a discrimination complaint and cancelling my account of 20+ years.
Of course, who can ever trust PayPal again. Let’s hope some sensible legislation against them gets on the statute book.
These quasi-public companies like to think they can do whatever they want by calling themselves private.
Well done Toby and team great work. I have written to my MP using the template sent to me by UsForThem. As it looks identical to the one you sent me I haven’t sent it again much that I’d like to irritate him being a fully paid up member of the Corbynister!
The scariest thing is that these globalist corporations, by embracing so-called ‘values’ and the fascism that is ‘stakeholder capitalism’ are effectively creating their own legal system outside of international law. Say or do something entirely legal in your own country that doesn’t fit with the ‘values’ of a corporation – whether as an employee in his spare time or a ‘consumer’ or client – and you’ll find yourself reported via the likes of Twitter to the corporation’s own ‘secret police’, who will judge you behind closed doors and ‘disappear’ you.
Imagine The Daily Sceptic and FSU hadn’t survived the last fortnight: effectively, two organisations would have been wiped out in what is little more than a financial version of SWATting. Neither organisation has broken the law, but they’ve been terminated in a manner as ruthless as any totalitarian national government’s secret police. Toby is in a position to rally troops. Many people aren’t.
The corporations and investment banks are using the same methods as Red China: they’re culturally Marxist in order to control the freedoms and outspokenness of employees and their clients, while playing at neo-liberal economics in order to game the capitalist system to maximise profits.
There has to be some formal recourse for ordinary less influential individuals and businesses. This should not be left up to company’s internal processes which, as was shown for Toby Young, is no process at all. These financial companies like PayPal, credit card companies and banks can effectively destroy your business or remove your livelihood should not be allowed to do so on a whim that is unchallengeable. There are essential services.
How much more damage and destruction can people & organizations cause to other people, all in the name of protecting the innocent! COVID has shown what people are capable of all while supposedly doing good!
‘… the input from our customers and stakeholders.’
But not shareholders? It seems shareholders are no longer considered by management of public companies. And that is where the problem lies, shareholders don’t seem to care about their investment, so why should managers?
I heard a radio ad today for PayPal… first I have ever heard. Coincidence?
The good thing was that these articles spelled “FSU” correctly … so there’ a big plus via free advertising. I do wish more of these articles would have mentioned The Daily Sceptic. Most, picking up on the irony, focussed on the ban/de-monentizations of the Free Speech Union.
After this occurred, I changed from a one-time donor to a recurring donor. I hope I wasn’t the only one who used this form of free speech to send a message to our pals at PayPal.
I closed my account and will never use them again.
Would anyone have a link to a copy of the bill going through parliament? I think it would be a good idea to push for similar in Australia