I keep seeing this sentiment in similar threads (i.e. Cloudflare, Twitter, etc...). Gab has a right to free speech and association. Does Coinbase not enjoy the same right?
Until a service becomes so widespread and essential as to be declared a public good/utility, this looks like 'business is business' IMO.
>What happens if service was withdrawn because the user was black?
in the analog world countries provide civil rights protections for day to day commerce for this type of situation, in the digital world it's unlikely to ever matter that you are black, unless you state so in the first place.
The question itself shines light on the important difference here. Gab is not discriminated because of some natural feature about them, they are discriminated against because they act like unsavoury people that nobody wants to be associated with.
Nope, being black is not the same as being a troll or a fascist on the internet. People have the right to not be associated with you if you present yourself in a manner that alienates other customers or is simply incompatible with our values at large.
But there should be no discrimination at all.
If there is a court case and gab is found guilty of something, or a court orders something, fair enough. That isn't the case here.
Discrimination is a broad term, typically used to indicate an individual person is being discriminated against based on their membership of a group of similar persons which usually fall around race, age, sexual orientation, etc. Discrimination, outside this context, means "recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another". A company cannot be discriminated against while applying an individual person context because they are not people.
There's exactly one person being discriminated against here and that is based on the business they run and the relationship they had with Coinbase. Coinbase, and Brian, have every right to limit their business dealings with Gab, and can do so without it being "discriminatory" in nature. Arguing otherwise
may be considered an attempt to control the conversation in a direction that leads away from logic.
What if it was socialists, union organizers, or environmentalists getting discriminated against? Will we also tell them to stop acting in a way that makes businesses not want to be associated with them?
You said 'incompatible with our values', but it's not 'us' that make these decisions by voting or something, it's a handful of corporations.
Well personal disclosure I'm pretty staunchly left so I'm not going to lie, I think It'd be pretty bad of a business to discriminate against those groups but I think at least the case can be made that those groups have the potential to disrupt the platform and everybody else on it through their political activity, so I think the owner has some legitimate discretion.
I do agree that there should be basic protections on private platforms for speech, especially if people are threatened to be excluded based on ethnic or religious or apolitical identity. But I think it would be absurd to say, if a company could not shut down a threatening or violent, or otherwise outside of the norm organisation.
There are businesses that do discriminate against those groups. You don't hear much about it because they're usually small businesses that can afford to alienate people who aren't their customers.
And that's precisely why I'm so interested in projects like GNU Taler[1]. We need a privacy-focused payment system for the internet, and something like GNU Taler tries to imitate cash, which I think is a good fit.
Even with multiple services, they can have similar terms. E.g. sex workers have great difficulties finding payment processors, and nazis have a hard time finding web-hosts.
Gab is basically "Twitter for neo-nazis". In theory they go on about being defenders of free speech but their original logo was a reference to Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character the Internet far-right racist crowd appropriated as their mascot.
Yes, and he also posted on Facebook. I don't see Facebook getting cut off from payment processing, data center space, internet connections, or anything else.
This is purely a planned political attack. Gab refused to censor politically incorrect thinking. Facebook is happy to censor, even going after Diamond and Silk until congress started asking uncomfortable questions.
Exactly. When Facebook was informed of the content of posts, they removed them. Gab did not. And that makes all the difference in why payment processors will continue to do business with Facebook but not Gab.
I find it interesting the process that seems to have taken place here. There is quite clearly no monopoly on payment systems on the internet. There's bank transfer, visa, western union, paypal, a million different bitcoin exchanges.
So for Gab to not have access to funds either one of two things can be true. 1: There is a large conspiracy of banking organisations to stifle Gab for reasons we can speculate about. 2: Each of these organisations have seen Gab and made individual decisions about whether they want to associate themselves with Gab.
What boggles my mind is how many people think that it must be 1.
I havent seen anyone claiming it was 1. Although I don't visit gab, where most of those people probably are.
Having said that, who are all those companies regulated by?
I don't have a fully formed accusation here. All I know is that finance is heavily regulated. I suspect even the fear of regulators asking questions, and all the paperwork that would entail would be enough reason for some companies to cut their links.
I suspect Gab isn’t related to something like that though. It’s more that media focus on Gab means each company they do business with will want to drop them as a PR hot potato, to avoid news articles saying “why is X still willing to work with Gab?”
You're deliberately misrepresenting what that Operation was about. The target was money laundering, and they investigated the 50 or so businesses most associated with laundering. The point was to prevent money laundering without significantly interfering with those industries' access to financial services.
Meanwhile, Gab is just reaping what it has sowed. They claim that they represent the silent majority, and if that's not another one of their lies they shouldn't have any problems setting up their own financial services.
I completely disagree with the statement that I "deliberately misrepresent[ed]" anything. I read through the wikipedia link before sharing it. Did you bother to read it before attacking me?
A small excerpt:
> On May 29, 2014, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform published a highly critical staff report that concluded:[21]
> “ Forceful prosecution of those who defraud American consumers is both responsible and admirable. However, Department of Justice initiatives to combat mass-market consumer fraud must be legitimate exercises of the Department's legal authorities, and must be executed in a manner that does not unfairly harm legitimate merchants and individuals.
> Operation Choke Point fails both these requirements. The Department's radical reinterpretation of what constitutes an actionable violation under § 951 of FIRREA fundamentally distorts Congress' intent in enacting the law, and inappropriately demands that bankers act as the moral arbiters and policemen of the commercial world. In light of the Department's obligation to act within the bounds of the law, and its avowed commitment not to "discourage or inhibit" the lawful conduct of honest merchants, it is necessary to disavow and dismantle Operation Choke Point.
regarding Gab, your 2nd paragraph seems to agree with what I said, so nothing to say there.
It's sort of in between, it's not as clear cut as you make it sound.
All of these processors ultimately depend on their banks, who are super strict. Banks are super strict because money is an insanely regulated industry. Banks are directed by regulators and lawmakers. They do not take any chances.
Services like these each somehow coincidentally (not really) come to the same conclusions because they're all trying to appease the same industry, directed by the same regulators. If they lose their banking relationships they are dead.
It's not a conspiracy and they're not really making individual decisions either, it's just how modern banking works.
Can you prove, or at least find some evidence of conspiracy? Gab is an unpopular service, and doing business with them would become news and risk their other customers, so it's not too surprising that payment processors and banks choose to not to business with them.
I think it's less conspiracy and more defensive business strategy.
I wish payment processing and banking were more anonymous, and I'm very interested in projects like GNU Taler[1] that seek to find privacy conscious ways of doing transactions online. However, if they can't even find a bank to do business with them (or start one themselves), they're kind of screwed.
