PayPal has instituted a new policy aimed at censoring what digital denizens can and can’t read, and they’re doing it in a way that leaves us with little recourse to challenge their policies in court. Indie publisher Smashwords has notified contributing authors, publishers, and literary agents that they would no longer be providing a platform for certain forms of sexually explicit fiction. This comes in response to an initiative by online payment processor PayPal to deny service to online merchants selling what they deem to be obscene written content. PayPal is demonstrating, again and to our great disappointment, the dire consequences to online speech when service providers start acting like content police.
What alternatives are there to Paypal? I’m hating them more and more every day. I hate that I rely on them for so many things. What else can I do?
paypal being shitty again. i would also like to know of alternatives, esp. for international users. (yes, that’s another way paypal is a bag of dicks.)
