Clearly, the Big Techies and their shysters are not what they pretend to be. They are neither coding geniuses who selflessly inhabit a cold maze of abstraction for the good of us all, nor courageous protectors of the natural environment and social order, nor technocratic good shepherds bent on improving society or making the world a better place. They are narcissistic, megalomaniacal, criminally inclined grifters, and they are busily spinning out revision after revision for their terms of service in an endless attempt to defraud their clients and rip off the public.
A few short days ago, Paypal threatened its clients with punitive theft of their money should they dare say anything that Paypal didn’t like, publishing new Terms of Service which deviated markedly from those it had originally offered its clients in order to get them to use its payment services in the first place. Specifically, it announced that it would be reaching into client accounts and confiscating $2500 from any client who trangressed its political dicta. That’s when I wrote this article.
But before I could publish, Paypal did an about-face, pulled its revised Terms-of-Service “User Agreement”, and high-tailed it in the opposite direction. This was arguably a good thing, as it was not actually a user agreement, but more of a self-dealing bait-and-switch, i.e., a “We-hate-conservatives-so-hand-over-your-wallets-and jewelry-and-drop-dead!” ultimatum.
Nevertheless, I’m now publishing the article as originally written. That’s because this isn’t just about Paypal, but about Big Tech in general.
By “Big Tech”, I mean the whole range of online-service providers, everything from financial services to social media platforms and even “creator sites” like Patreon, which pretend that the artistic and intellectual freedom of their users means everything to them. Eventually, almost all of these bloated software-techie parasites con themselves into thinking that they own literally everything they touch, including your money, your intellectual property, your artistic creations, your personal opinions, your right to express yourself, your right to defend yourself from criminals and tyrants, and your right to enjoy a safe and secure existence in your own culturally, historically, and ideologically homogeneous (or at least self-consistent and viable) homeland.
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