A group of members out of the Senate put in a request for further information from PayPal regarding a recently retracted attempt to sanction and charge its users $2,500 for spreading what they label as “misinformation” via the platform.
Known for having de-platformed quite a few different groups and various people for their political viewpoints, PayPal recently posted about a new policy change to its established acceptable use policy which would have placed a ban on the promotion of “misinformation,” along with “hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory.” Due to extreme online backlash, PayPal made the claim that the guidelines had been made public “in error.”
Highlighting a report published in The Daily Wire, Sen. Tom Tillis (R-NC), Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), and five Republican colleagues called on Dan Schulman, the CEO of PayPal, via a letter to request that he explain the new “processes and values” put in place which allowed the previously retracted policy to move forward.
“PayPal has consistently spread the dubious claim that this provision was ‘never intended to be inserted in our policy’ as stated by a company spokesperson,” stated the legislators. “If accurate, this statement indicates an astonishing lack of internal oversight at PayPal.”
The company attempted to defend its odd position by making the claim that PayPal had already set up a policy of stealing $2,500 from its user’s accounts in the wake of each violation of its acceptable use policy. In the wake of the lawmakers noting that the current list of expressly prohibited activities largely entails breaches of law, they expressed that the “addition of a vague prohibition on spreading ‘misinformation’ not only would have concerningly expanded the scope of punishable actions, but also would have decreased clarity and increased subjectivity” within the banned activities list.
One lead spokesperson for Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) explained that PayPal has still not issued a response to the requests and questions from the legislators, which they requested be done by October 28th at the latest.
Recently, PayPal trended across social media in the wake of posting its new acceptable use policy which ended up catching the attention of the public, leading to multiple thousands of customers voicing their rejection of the move on social media and outright canceling their entire accounts. The stock of the company dropped precipitously in later trading as the extreme backlash spooked the company’s various investors.
