Until recently, this was a staple of British public life – eccentricity is adored and free speech offered for even the craziest of causes. Campaign groups of any persuasion can open bank accounts, print leaflets and pay their bills. But in the digital world, life outside the mainstream becomes more difficult. All you need to do is tweak a censoring algorithm afterwards: presto! As the Socialist Workers Party once discovered, the Facebook page can disappear. We were never told what the SWP did wrong, which is part of the problem: Silicon Valley’s social media giants answer to no one. It all kicked into high gear this week when PayPal closed the accounts of the Free Speech Union and the Anti-lockdown Daily Skeptic without explanation. The latest victim is the UsForThem campaign, which sought to highlight the impact of school closures during the lockdown. They are using PayPal to fundraise, but the account has been suspended. Given PayPal’s market dominance, it’s quite a problem. This matters because party conventions are now museum events. Activists of all persuasions are using digital media to reach out to each other, to recruit, to raise money. PayPal, being bigger than its next eight competitors combined, has enormous power – and if it locks users out of its services, it can do serious damage. A third of the Free Speech Union’s subscriptions, for example, are paid through PayPal. The company’s dominance in the world of electronic payments gives it enormous influence, which it has now shown a willingness to abuse. If this was a supermarket using local monopoly powers to raise prices, the government would crack it down in a heartbeat. But with tech giants, it’s different. They offer to put their enormous power at the service of governments: in the case of Facebook, they literally run ads offering to work in “cooperation” with the authorities. It’s like they say: if you don’t set us up too much, we’ll make sure accidents keep happening to your enemies. We’ll clean up the mess, don’t worry. Skeptics targeting PayPal’s lockdown can certainly be seen as a continuation of this trend of politicization. When David Davis’ speech challenging vaccine passports was removed from YouTube, it was the most egregious example of digital censorship. PayPal’s entry into civil enforcement adds a chilling financial aspect to this. In America, it targets left-wing websites – to be fair, relatively crazy – that oppose Joe Biden’s Ukraine policy. But do we want financial services to behave this way in Britain? As we move towards a cashless economy, such companies will become part of the basic infrastructure of everyday life – a point raised in Parliament yesterday. Penny Mordaunt, the new Leader of the House, responded by suggesting a debate and pointing out that tech giants tend to never explain themselves. But she should also pause to consider the extra power her government is about to give them. The Internet Safety Bill is still making its way through the Commons, threatening to create the concept of “lawful but harmful” – that is, speech that can be censored. Michelle Donelan, the new Culture Secretary has hinted that this idea will be reviewed, but it must go ahead completely. It will introduce to Britain the proxy censorship model used to stifle dissent in China, where the black pen is wielded not by the government but by social media companies that use algorithms to hunt down offensive words (and therefore opinions) in real-time. time. When in doubt, they delete it. Kemi Badenoch and Rishi Sunak pledged to abolish it, but Liz Truss did not. So this self-proclaimed defender of free speech may well introduce a censorship law. It might start with a denial of publishing rights, but it could quickly turn into a denial of access to digital financial services. All of this should be anathema to a Liberal prime minister, but it’s quite possible her attention is elsewhere. Digital censorship has moved so fast that, even now, ministers don’t really understand it’s happening – or that they have the power to stop it. This is not an easy question. Like any bank or private company, PayPal is legally entitled to deny accounts to anyone it likes. So should the state interfere with the freedom of business owners? But landlords are no longer allowed to block tenants based on skin color. Bed and Breakfast owners cannot refuse gay guests. There is a general perception that a public service should be a public service for all. The challenge is to make another fairly basic point: that protecting diversity should also mean diversity of opinion. Until now, financial services rarely verified the political views of their customers: such behavior was thought to have been left behind after the fall of communism. But to the extent that politicians have failed to realise, British traditions of free speech are steadily being replaced by the de facto censorship of Silicon Valley. And Truss could be months away from empowering these new censors, in the mistaken belief that she is calling them to task. The obvious solution is to replace the Internet Safety Act with a law that makes it illegal to deny digital services to anyone because of race, religion or color – and faith includes belief. Unless the speech is illegal, such as promoting violence or terrorism, no one should be censored or shadow-banned for political beliefs. Nor should anyone lose a bank account for saying the wrong things. Penny Mordaunt is right to call for a debate: letting this slide will mean more voices being silenced and more lifelines being cut. The Prime Minister said she stands for freedom, at home and abroad. Protecting free speech for the digital age would be a great start.
