PayPal backs off Atlas
A thousand letters and phone calls were enough to get PayPal to reinstate Atlas Shrugs, but Pamela has already decided that she is going elsewhere (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).I asked her why I was singled out and who designated me as a hate speech site, and on what basis? Why was revolution muslim (which threatened to murder the producers of Comedy Central) and Imam Awlaki DVDs part of the paypal stable of vendors? She said she was "unaware of a hate speech designation and would inquire and call me back."She's right. I had one of those 'contests' with one of the vendors that used to be on this blog. When traffic went up because of a war, they accused me of churning my hits. The appeal consisted of "send us whatever you think is relevant" followed by an email that said "we reviewed your material and we still think we were right.
And so she did.
She said Atlas was mistakenly designated when "in review." I asked why was Atlas in review. Paypal has been on this website since 2005. She did not have an answer. I asked what recourse do smaller websites have? As this is my real concern. My soapbox is pretty big, but what about small blogs?
I told Leslie that reinstating me was not good enough. If a site is designated a "hate site," who decides? Once designated, you have two choices -- lose paypal, or change content. Unfair, mon frere. Leslie agreed. She said she was going to recommend a third choice so that one could contest the designation before a mandatory choice had to be made of either signing off of paypal or changing content.
Frankly, I find this weak. They should remove the designation altogether. If they are going to allow jihadis to raise dough using paypal, what's the point of any hate speech designation?
Some of you may also recall the night a few months ago, when Blogspot shut Barry Rubin and me down simultaneously - with no explanation.
Due process it isn't.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:22 PM
2 Comments:
Pamela is a genius. There is barely anything I disagree with her on. However she is way too divisive and her salacious name calling is a big turn off.
Sadly, her genius will be wasted because of it.
We all need to carry a big stick but in the end if we go at it exactly like our enemies we are on the same footing as them.
Bottom line, her website does contain hate speech and in this era of turning a politically blind eye to our enemies with political correctness it will be Atlas who gets the axe. And she did.
Freedom of speech always errs on the side of the most dangerous. All others are targeted. And she was.
Yah, she will now be the poster girl for the right because of it but if the powers that be turn off her message because of her delivery she is only signing to the choir.
Which is why I asked Carl to move to a new host and you've never done it. Do you have a backup server to which you've transferred all your work? With today's "cloud computing" there is no excuse for not doing it. You don't want to be at the mercy of Blogspot and give them an excuse to shut you down because someone there takes offense at some future post of yours.
What could go wrong indeed
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