Over the past few days, several independent news outlets and journalists have had their PayPal accounts abruptly canceled and their funds frozen by the company for unspecified offenses. These outlets also happened to have dissented in various ways from official orthodoxy on the Ukraine war. Since the Russian invasion, a series of extreme, wartime-like information-control policies had already been taken up in the West. The latest news suggests the trend is getting dramatically worse.
Consortium News, founded by the late Associated Press investigative legend Robert Parry in 1995 as one of the web’s very first independent, reader-funded news outlets, reported over the weekend that PayPal had “permanently limited” its account, just as it was launching its Spring Fund Drive. According to editor-in-chief Joe Lauria — a former longtime United Nations correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and others — the company said it would hold onto the thousands of dollars accumulated in the outlet’s account for 180 days and reserved the right to seize the money entirely to pay for unnamed “damages.”
According to Lauria, Consortium News was neither warned that they were at risk of censure nor given a reason for it in either PayPal’s initial email or a follow-up call with a customer service representative. PayPal’s back office didn’t give a reason for the action, and there was no existing case against the outlet. Lauria reported he was informed of
— source jacobin.com | Branko Marcetic | 05.03.2022