If you were planning to use PayPal to send some coinage to your favorite racist, hate-mongering website to show support, PayPal just made it a little harder for you to support hate.
“Regardless of the individual or organization in question, we work to ensure that our services are not used to accept payments or donations for activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance,” the company said in a statement.
“This includes organizations that advocate racist views, such as the KKK, white supremacist groups, or Nazi groups,” it continued.
“If we become aware of a website or organization using our services that may violate our policies, our highly trained team of experts addresses each case individually and carefully evaluates the website itself, any associated organizations, and their adherence to our policy,” PayPal said. “Ultimately, this team of professionals makes a recommendation that leads to the final determination on our ability to maintain our relationship with the website’s owner.”
PayPal’s senior vice president of corporate affairs and communications, Franz Paasche, went on to state that Paypal is still striving to navigate the “balance between protecting the principles of tolerance,” while also realizing that “upholding legitimate free expression and open dialogue can be difficult.”
The statement comes on the heels of GoDaddy finally saying that it will no longer host the white supremacist website the Daily Stormer, which is now completely offline. Because who wants to go down as the company that hosts hate?