Last week PayPal, the financial technology giant, released a policy update indicating that the payment processor had the ability to sanction the accounts of users who spread “misinformation” or presented risks to the “wellbeing” of other PayPal users. These sanctions were to manifest in the form of $2,500 fines for each infringing utterance.
Under this policy, PayPal, a service that is used by 31 million small businesses to facilitate transactions, could bankrupt entire local economies if enough people shared “what is a woman” memes.
Once news of the policy update surfaced, thousands of people rushed to close their PayPal accounts and the company scrambled to apologize to the millions of people it told to go pound sand. Despite attempting to clarify that the policy update was made in error, the damage was done, a fact that PayPal’s stock price currently reflects.
And, to be fair, maybe the multibillion-dollar company that
