- PayPal CEO Dan Schulman admitted on Monday that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) advises PayPal on which users and websites that may be “violating” the company’s policies.
- The SPLC is currently being sued by Gavin McInnes for defamation after they falsely designated McInnes’ former organization The Proud Boys as an “extremist hate group.”
- PayPal has blacklisted Gavin McInnes, investigative journalist Laura Loomer, political activist Tommy Robinson, blogger Roosh V, and organizations likeWikiLeaks and InfoWars, among others.
In a so-called push for “diversity and inclusion” on his payment processing platform, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman admitted PayPal consults with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) when making decisions to blacklist people from using their service.
When asked what values PayPal identifies with, Schulman replied, “probably the most important value to us is diversity and inclusion.” Schulman also claimed, “Because the line between free speech and hate, nobody teaches it to you in college. Nobody’s defined it in the law.”
Last year, the SPLC paid a $3.3 million settlement to anti-extremist activist Maajid Nawaz after the organization included him on a list of “anti-Muslim extremists,” despite Nawaz being Muslim himself. The SPLC is currently being sued by Gavin McInnes, after they labeled his former organization The Proud Boys an “extremist hate group” and alleged that they promoted violence.
Schulman admitted that PayPal now removes between 10 and 100 accounts per month “….that have either been flagged by our algorithms or by outside groups—that potentially promote hate, violence or racial intolerance.”
