The web witnessed another episode of major companies stopping certain projects from using their services last week. This time, it was tech goliaths Paypal and Facebook that kicked out Bitchute and banned Bloom respectively.

Paypal simply stopped Bitchute from using its services to receive and make payments, while Facebook stopped Bloom’s ads from running on their platform.

In yet another incident of Paypal simply freezing and closing customers’ accounts, last week saw Paypal withdrawing their services from Bitchute, a Youtube competitor platform. In fact, it does appear that Paypal is really sensitive about the projects that utilize their services.

While we used to think that it would only take the most extreme flagrant disregard of the company’s rules and regulations to get kicked out (here’s looking at you Alex Jones), the recent incident involving Bitchute has proven us wrong.

It appears that even the smallest offences or the fact that the company simply doesn’t like what you’re doing is enough for them to get you off their platforms –even when you’re paying for their services. They can willy-nilly kick you out because they can. Bitchute released a statement saying,

“A few hours ago Bitchute received a notice that our Paypal account has been permanently limited, with immediate effect, and that we will no longer be able to accept or send payments,… The notice included the following information: ‘The User Agreement for Paypal Service states that Paypal, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to limit an account for any violation of the User Agreement, including the Acceptable Use Policy’.”

Shortly after their announcement, many leading mediax organizations jumped on the news, stating that it’s not the first time Paypal has done such a thing. Breitbart for instance, sowed other examples of companies that Paypal had kicked out of its service for whatever reasons:

“Infowars, Tommy Robinson, Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Wikileaks, and 2018 Toronto mayoral election candidate Faith Goldy are also currently, or have previously been, blacklisted by PayPal,”

Some schools of thought are of the opinion that any company can determine its policies and are under no obligations to offer their services to any entity.

In fact, they categorically believe that any entity that has a problem with an organization’s policies can simply go look for alternatives that would better meet their needs. Unfortunately, these perspectives are unrealistic, considering the current state of the internet.

For instance, the company Gab has been using other services after Paypal, Microsoft and Godaddy kicked them out. This has led to the company actively seeking out entities that aren’t against their business model –which is centered on free speech. Unfortunately, that has proven to be a somewhat difficult task.

Another company that has recently had issues with tech giants is Bloom, a crypto based social credit network platform, that Facebook cracked down on by banning all the company’s ads. Facebook’s reason was that Bloom was a financial service, and they don’t take advertising from financial service firms.

Bloom on the other hand, refuted these claims, stating that they were probably banned because Facebook  felt they were in direct competition with their Facebook Login ID service. According to Jesse Leimgruber, Bloom’s cofounder,

“They probably didn’t like that the ads were really pointed and that we ramped up spend after the Facebook hack, … They were directed at ‘take back the data’ in the days after the Facebook hack. I’m sure they were very sensitive to this. I think they just needed a way to justify banning us.”

While these incidents were clearly motivated by other factors, the reality is firms, particularly those in the crypto space, might need to start seeking out alternative service providers if they want to stay solvent and relevant.

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