Nowhere is the practice of weblining more evident than with PayPal. For over ten years PayPal, the world's most ubiquitous payment processor, has emerged as the king of denying service, seizing accounts and freezing funds for anyone discovered to be associated with sexual content online -- even educational or artistic content.
The stories about PayPal's denial of financial services to anyone discovered to be in sex "neighborhoods" are plentiful. It's troubling to note just how much the impact is disproportionately on women.
PayPal's
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states that the PayPal service may not be used for activities that "relate to transactions involving ... items that are considered obscene ... [or] certain sexually oriented materials or services." Yet it's the way in which PayPal has chosen to enforce its policy over the years that make the comparisons with redlining seem not so far-fetched.
PayPal banned dominatrix January Seraph in 2010 and any business run or owned by her "for life." PayPal froze accounts and seized funds belonging to Dee Dennis Tess Danesi, whose transgression was publishing the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar. Blogger and adult industry writer Cara Sutra was banned for selling a corset. Former escort Vicki Gallas was banned from using PayPal to process payments for her memoirs, because they included sex work. Seattle Erotic Art Festival had their account frozen even though they only used the service to process fine art submission fees.
Apparently, PayPal also has no problem making other businesses to do its content policing.
In March 2014, PayPal nailed subscription-model crowdfunding platform Patreon, which emailed its users
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, "We got a notice from Paypal this morning that they were shutting down their entire integration with Patreon because of "adult content" on our site!" Patreon told Engadget, "Paypal informed us that we were violating their terms of service by using PayPal to support creators that made NSFW content. We complied and removed Paypal as a payment option for those creators."
Despite what companies like Square say about "
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" for merchants, the company has followed in PayPal's anti-sex footsteps. Searah Deysach is the owner of Chicago's highly respected, indie, education-focused, woman-owned sex toy store Early to Bed. She
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, "I tried so hard to work with Square for Early to Bed, but they would not budge." Escorts and dominatrixes report having their Square accounts closed or denied outright; feminist pornographer Courtney Trouble was denied services by both PayPal and Square.
PayPal's line is to blame credit card companies. Porn performer and producer Maggie Mayhem began a fundraiser to do relief work in Haiti. PayPal closed her account and seized her money after she linked it from her sex blog, telling Mayhem that the "dispute was ultimately with a Visa policy about blasphemy."