On 28 December 2018, it was reported that cybersecurity news outlet The Hacker News (THN) had all its corporate accounts with the payment company shut down and they were no longer accessible by the news outlet.

It was understood that PayPal gave no explanation on the bans upon THN’s accounts and had also hold wallet funds for 180 days inappropriately. The situation was described to be frustrating by THN, stating that the company should be able to provide at least one plausible reason for the shutdown.

It was reported that PayPal was not required to provide a reason as written in the company’s service’s terms of use, stating that the company had the right to freeze its users’ accounts without the need of explaining why.

PayPal had a history of blocking its corporate clients’ account funds without reason, including those related to the crypto industry. Some people claim that the bans did not make sense and were just censorship presented at its worst. A lot of people are also moving towards decentralized systems and services to escape similar scenarios of centralized establishments censoring ‘different’ narratives.

As PayPal is proving to be uncooperative with THN, explaining that the reasons behind the ban was “proprietary” and “not released”, crypto users have been pointing the news outlet towards Bitcoin instead.

Some commented that Bitcoin “does not care”, implying that the cryptocurrency would not apply the same ridiculous amount of digital censorship like certain centralized payment firms. Crypto friendly firms and start-ups even saw it as a path to “victory” to spread the usage and name of the cryptocurrency.

A developer at Tim Draper-backed OpenNode named Rui Gomes commented on the situation with ongoing censorship by centralized financial firms, stating that Bitcoin’s value will only increase as censoring moves continue to be implemented by these firms.

Additionally, another firm named Patreon, a platform which allows its users to gain benefits from their supporters more easily, recently banned a psychology professor and political commentator named Jordan Peterson, as he allegedly promoted political ideas that were not on the same page with Patreon’s terms of services.