Last week, the hugely popular online payments service, PayPal, bowed to pressure and removed several extremist organisations from collecting donations using its site. An online petition has seen over 37,000 people sign up to ask PayPal to take a stand and stop these organisations using the service to fund their hatred.
One such organisation, New Generation Ministries, has members who have been prosecuted for homophobic murder, and their leader Alexy Ledyaev has been quoted as saying, ‘homosexuals are not happy or spiritual people, because they were molested and abused in their childhoods, but that does not give them the right to abuse and rape others.’
PayPal’s rules already state that you may not promote ‘hate, violence, and racial intolerance,’ when using the service: however, this does not seem to cover allowing these organisations to collect payments. This being the case, it seems that only a sense of moral responsibility (or more likely, concern of damage to their brand) can cause PayPal to ban them.
Many of those who have signed the petition to PayPal have stated that they will stop using the service if organisations promoting hate are allow to continue taking advantage of this easy solution for collecting funds. PayPal has in recent times claimed to have over 100 million users, which makes us wonder if they will be worried about a mere 0.037% of their users jumping ship. Further to that, how many of those who have said they will boycott the service actually will do? How many people actually put their morals before convenience?
The point is, it isn’t the technology that is bad – it is the users. In recent weeks we have seen a Facebook ‘troll’ jailed for 18 weeks and given an ASBO banning him from using the social networking site after he created a web page mocking a dead teenager and sending inappropriate messages to the grieving family. While few are in favour of internet censorship, in that case it certainly seems that the user was held to account and not the website, which is just how it should be.
It is also important to remember just how much good technology does in the world. During the Haiti Disaster Emergency Appeal in the UK, PayPal processed nearly £1 million in donations. Without an easy way for people to give their cash to good causes, would they be raising as much? Most likely not.
It will be interesting to see whether PayPal bows to public pressure and removes all of the organisations listed on the petition from using its service. However, instead of spending our energies shouting at PayPal, maybe we should be trying to educate and change the opinions of those within our communities who badly need to change their views.
You can sign the petition to PayPal at AllOut.org.
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