PayPal Blames ‘Error’ For Policy Change With $2500 ‘Misinformation’ Fines After Elon Musk Calls Them Out
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A PayPal Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) change set to go into effect on November 3 included the possibility of imposing penalties on users who “promote misinformation.” But after former PayPal president David Marcus and Tesla CEO and PayPal co-founder Elon Musk tweeted about the new rule on Saturday, a spokesperson for PayPal said that they never intended that to be the case.
The news spread fast this week after PayPal posted the new policy expanding the list of “prohibited activities” in the user agreement. It also warned that “Violation of this Acceptable Use Policy constitutes a violation of the PayPal User Agreement and 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(s).”
In addition to prohibiting and fining users for things like promoting illegal drug use, violence, and criminal activity, the list included activities that “depict, promote, or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.),” or which “present a risk to user safety or wellbeing.”
The inclusion of activities that “promote misinformation” resulted in multiple articles, primarily on conservative websites like Daily Wire or National Review, until David Marcus weighed in on Saturday.
Marcus said that a private company having the power to simply take your money from you because they disagree with something you say is “insanity.”
It’s hard for me to openly criticize a company I used to love and gave so much to. But @PayPal’s new AUP goes against everything I believe in. A private company now gets to decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with. Insanity. https://t.co/Gzf8faChUb
— David Marcus (@davidmarcus) October 8, 2022
Elon Musk, who frequently weighs in on issues of big tech using various methods to censor speech, agreed in a reply.
Agreed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 8, 2022
A short time later, PayPal blamed the publication of those policy changes on an error, saying in a statement that:
“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.”
In the first report on the changes, Daily Wire’s Ben Zeisloft spoke with Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s Aaron Terr about the implications, were the policy to be implemented as published.
“Under existing law, PayPal has the ability as a private company to implement this type of viewpoint-discriminatory policy,” Aaron Terr, a senior program officer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, explained to The Daily Wire. “Whatever motivation PayPal has for establishing these vague new categories of prohibited expression, they will almost certainly have a severe chilling effect on users’ speech. As is often the case with ill-defined and viewpoint-discriminatory speech codes, those with unpopular or minority viewpoints will likely bear the brunt of these restrictions.”
PayPal and other large tech companies have previously made news when cutting ties or denying service to individuals or companies based on their political positions, affiliations, or activities — mainly if not almost exclusively targeting those on the political right.
This story is still developing and may be updated to include additional statements.
