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In Our World Of Corporate Governance, ‘Misinformation’ Fines Like PayPal’s Are The Norm, Not The Exception

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Americans need the freedom to opt out of giving their money to companies and people that hate them and their worldview. 

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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 has a history of deplatforming conservatives and other people who are out of step with woke orthodoxy did make an honest mistake and doesn’t plan on policing the speech of its users by fining them thousands of dollars. But let’s be realistic. Multinational corporations — including but not limited to those found in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street — have weaponized and continue to weaponize themselves against dissent. 

Stakeholder Capitalism

The whole of the American economy (and therefore, by association the collective industrial West) is mission focused on creating a geopolitical order in which various industries — controlled by members of the managerial elite and secular left — are able to superimpose their will on people by manipulating global markets. Groups like the World Economic Forum talk about this rather explicitly as they push for things like stakeholder capitalism, a market system in which corporate governance determines societal trajectory, in the implementation of the nefariously named Great Reset.  

Big businesses suppress speech that offends the sensibilities of the ruling regime, as seen by Silicon Valley’s hostility towards conservative speech online; actively interfere in the politics of Republican states, like when major corporations tried to bully Georgia out of requiring voter ID; and rabidly pursue indoctrination campaigns as they work to ensure ideological compliance with leftist causes, lest we forget Disney’s “not-at-all-secret gay agenda.” 

Every other industry is weaponized against you, so what incentives does the financial sector have to break rank? 

Major financial institutions like American Express, Visa, and Mastercard have even begun the implementation of a “merchant code” to assist in the identification and inevitable punishment of gun retailers who legally sell firearms to people who go on to use them in violent crimes. And Mike Lindell, the founder and CEO of MyPillow, was allegedly forced to close his bank accounts with Minnesota Bank & Trust and Heartland Financial USA after being told to “leave their bank[s]” over his support of President Donald Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

Ultimately, whether or not PayPal updated its policy by mistake is irrelevant because, given the trajectory of the current climate, it is only a matter of time until a similar system of financial punishment for wrongthink is in place.

Just look at how GoFundMe confiscated millions of dollars from the Freedom Convoy protesters in Canada, whose great crimes were refusing to comply with an experimental vaccine mandate and honking car horns. 

What Can Be Done?

That said, it doesn’t have to be this way. 

If people are to remain free from secular, left-wing tyranny being forced upon them by global corporate fascists, we need to get serious about our response to corporate overreach. It isn’t enough to cancel our accounts and mock companies when their stock prices temporarily fall; we need to implement systemic changes that prevent them from preying on people while they seek to remake civilization in their image. 

Sending people like Blake Masters and J.D. Vance to the U.S. Senate who intimately understand how big businesses work and aren’t afraid to use government power to bring them to heel must become a priority. But using federal power to do things like enforcing antitrust laws is just one piece of the puzzle. 

We have to assume that Republican, let alone competent Republican, control of the government has an expiration date, so using government power to implement (hopefully) long-lasting reform is a good start, but when the GOP is inevitably out of power again, the American people will need a flourishing parallel economy upon which they can rely. 

The Parallel Economy

In response to widespread censorship of conservative personalities and accounts across social media, right-wing tech entrepreneurs created platforms like Parler, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, and Truth Social. In response to conservatives being scorned in social settings, similar people created conservative-oriented dating apps like The Right Stuff and Cuffed. There are also conservative alternatives to women’s interest magazines, with Evie Magazine and The Conservateur

A popular conservative commentary outlet, the Daily Wire, is even attempting to cut into Hollywood’s market share by producing feature-length films and serialized children’s entertainment. 

Whereas all of these businesses serve practical purposes in helping people find dates, express themselves, or be entertained, there is a massive void waiting to be filled by “conservative alternatives” to institutions without which society cannot function. Notably, where are the conservative alternatives to banking that won’t penalize you for having the wrong opinions? Why are there so few alternatives to corporate health insurance that won’t force you to provide forms of birth control that violate your religious beliefs?

To protect the financial security and the political rights of the American people, to ensure that they are not taken advantage of by wealthy and influential transnational corporations that seek to control them, they need to be presented with the ability to opt out of giving their money to companies and people that hate them and their worldview. 

Companies like PayPal are going to continue advancing their worldview upon their customers. They will not stop unless they are made to stop. The only way to make them stop is to use government power to prevent them from preying on their users or depriving them of business. Governmental regulation is likely to be a temporary solution to what increasingly appears to be a permanent problem, so to give people the freedom they seek and deserve, a parallel economy with alternatives to legacy institutions uninhibited by leftwing corporate interests must become ascendant.


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