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Comment by beej71 | Hacker News Reader

> This whole "but it is a private company who gets to dictate what speech they want and don't want on their site" needs to go out the window.

But deciding what and what not to publish on your own website is protected by the First Amendment, is it not?

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Money transmitters don't have much discretion over their customer list. There are rules (PATRIOT Act AML provisions) that punish their executives with jail time if they have customers who turn out to be criminals, even if said executives didn't know anything about that at the time. And in some countries like France there are laws saying everyone has a right to a bank account. The courts will force a bank to open an account if someone can't get an account due to de-platforming. It was used by the ex-bitcoin exchange MtGox in the past, I think.

The first amendment is mostly about what the US government can/can’t do, and even then it’s not 100% protection.

I'll rephrase: the First Amendment generally prohibits the government from dictating what you can or cannot serve from your webserver, does it not?

but it is not a forum, PayPal more like bank, how can author of this article put any content on PayPal's website?

This is a valid question, and I was responding to another more speech oriented question earlier and I think got my signals crossed.

So in this case, I suppose the question is when must a business serve a customer they don't want?

Frankly, I'd like to see PayPal more heavily regulated for things like this, since I doubt they'll take action on their own.

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