(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) PayPal, the original digital-wallet platform that counted red-pilled liberals Peter Thiel and Elon Musk among its early investors, found itself in damage-control mode after becoming the latest cautionary tale of the “Go Woke, Go Broke” axiom.
The financing app was offering $15 to users not to quit amid growing backlash against its revised terms of service, which surreptitiously attempted to allow the platform to charge $2,500 to anyone the company deemed to have spread “hate” or “misinformation.”
According to Summit News, many conservatives were scoffing at the pittance of a make-good in return for the company’s egregious attempt to meddle with users’ privacy, personal finance and free-speech rights.
I'll accept $2500 to stick around. And I can fine the company $2500 any time they say something I dislike.
— Thaddeus Maartinez 🇺🇸 🏴 🇹🇼 (@DrTandtheLg) October 13, 2022
Conservatives have been particularly wary of the coordinated efforts among corrupt Democrats and their woke corporate allies to coerce self-censorship among their ideological opponents.
By using vague and subjective labels to invalidate conservative perspectives, government operatives including the Biden administration, the Department of Homeland Security and the intelligence community all have attempted to justify widespread suppression of free-speech rights without actually going through any legal avenues.
Recent whistleblower acknowledgements have revealed, for instance, that the FBI pressured social-media publishers to suppress the scandal surrounding Hunter Biden’s abandonned laptop in the leadup to the 2020 election, using the thin veneer of an excuse that some 50 anti-Trump bureaucrats claimed it was a Russian disinformation campaign.
The laptop was subsequently verified by many mainstream media outlets, but only after Biden had been installed in the White House.
Banking apps like PayPal have been particularly brazen in trying to assert their own authority and impose their values when it comes to people’s personal assets—often viewed as their own form of constitutionally protected free speech.
The crowd-funding site GoFundMe faced massive backlash and boycotts during the Canadian Freedom Convoy after it announced it would seize all donations to the anti-government group and would rerout them to the charity of its own choosing.
Several Twitter users appeared to see a parallel with PayPal.
Sorry PayPal, but it was no accident those words were even typed in the first place. Regardless of whether or not they were going to be enforced or applied in any way doesn't matter. The world now sees you in a different light for it, and now you're paying for it.
— Zeal4Truth (@zeal_4_truth) October 13, 2022
Take the $15 and donate it to an org they hate and then close your account
— Yanky (@Yanky_Pollak) October 13, 2022
Give me $2500 for spreading misinformation and I'll consider keeping my account
— CornPop (@first4venger) October 13, 2022
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at truthsocial.com/@bensellers.
