PayPal has terminated its contract with Infowars, the conspiracy site led by the controversial provocateur Alex Jones.
An Infowars article published Friday said that the online payment processing company was “giving Infowars 10 days to switch payment processors, after which all services would be terminated.”
A PayPal spokesperson confirmed with Coins2Day that it plans to end its business relationship with Infowars and sister sites like PrisonPlanet following an internal review.
“Our values are the foundation for the decision,” the PayPal spokesperson said in a statement. “We undertook an extensive review of the Infowars sites, and found instances that promoted hate or discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions, which run counter to our core value of inclusion.”
PayPal’s decision to cut ties with Infowars is another blow to the website and Jones, who is currently dealing with multiple defamation lawsuits over comments he made accusing the parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting of being “crisis actors” and alleging that the 2012 shooting was a government hoax.
Multiple technology companies have recently banned Infowars from their respective services, after years of letting Jones peddle conspiracy theories like the infamous Pizzagate scandal that falsely implicated 2016 U.S. Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton with a convoluted child abuse scheme.
Some of the tech companies that have booted Jones from their platforms include Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Spotify, online email company MailChimp, and Twitter.
Jones has long argued that his inflammatory comments fall within the boundaries of free speech, while his detractors accuse him of inciting and encouraging violence with his followers against those he considers his opponents.
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Facebook said in July when it banned Jones, that its “community standards make it clear that we prohibit content that encourages physical harm (bullying), or attacks someone based on their religious affiliation or gender identity (hate speech).”
This is not the first time PayPal has cut ties with a controversial organization.
In 2010, PayPal suspended an account tied to the whistle-blowing service WikiLeaks that collected donations, saying at the time that the account operated in “violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity.” That decision came after the U.S. Government criticized WikiLeaks for posting thousands of secret government files.
