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SAN FRANCISCO – PayPal has become the latest technology giant to cut Infowars, the conspiracy site run by right-wing provocateur Alex Jones.
On Thursday night, Infowars was informed that PayPal would have 10 business days to find a new payment processor.
PayPal manages all transactions, including credit cards, for the Infowars online store. The store has been a major source of revenue for the company, selling vitamins and nutritional supplements, as well as Infowars branded clothing. PayPal has also managed donations received from Infowars by its supporters.
PayPal acted for weeks after Twitter, Facebook and other major tech companies blocked Infowars from their services. Most of these companies said the site violated their policies by encouraging hate speech and misinformation.
PayPal stated that it had made its decision not because of a policy violation, but because "the promotion of hate and discrimination by Infoway goes against our core value of inclusion" .
"Our values are the basis of the decision we made this week," added PayPal.
The aggressive measures taken against Infowars have become the basis of claims that Silicon Valley companies would be partisan of conservative voices – an opinion voiced by President Trump and a number of Republican representatives. Jeff Sessions, the US Attorney General, plans to meet next week with Republican attorneys general to discuss the technology industry, competition and freedom of expression.
After the 10-day grace period, PayPal will stop any activity with Infowars and its affiliates, like the Prison Planet website, said a spokesman for PayPal.
The spokesman declined to cite specific problems that led to the decision, but said that after "thorough examinations," the company had "found many cases of content encouraging hatred and intolerance". discriminatory against certain communities and religions ".
This is not the first time that PayPal is embarking on politically difficult business. In 2010, the company discontinued payments to WikiLeaks. More recently, PayPal has stopped working with neo-Nazi and alternative websites.
The 2014 records show that Jones' operations reported nearly $ 20 million, mostly supplements, such as Super Male Vitality, which aims to increase testosterone, which he peddles in his radio broadcasts, The New York Times recently reported.
Since being excluded from Facebook and Twitter, Infowars has had to find new platforms online and its audience has dropped significantly. But the decision of PayPal can be particularly detrimental, as it will be much more difficult for Infowars to find another company to handle site transactions.
For now, Infowars is still able to sell at least some of its products on Amazon and eBay, where payments are not handled by PayPal.
An article on the Infowars website, which announced PayPal's decision, said the decision was a "political ploy designed to financially sabotage an influential media a few weeks before the mid-term elections."
The article said that PayPal had told Infowars that the decision had been made because Infowars had violated its "acceptable use policy". The spokesman for PayPal said that was not true.
Infowars did not respond to an email requesting a comment.
Follow Nathaniel Popper on Twitter: @nathanielpopper
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