January 15, 2025 - 3:15pm
The debanking phenomenon has been growing in recent years. From anti-vaccine truckers in Canada to Dutch farmers to Nigel Farage in Britain, people who say controversial things risk losing access to financial services.
In America, however, banks and tech firms might have a harder time carrying out this sort of private censorship — thanks to Team Biden. This week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed regulations that would bar firms “fining, suing, or deplatforming based on customer comments, reviews, or political or religious views” using contracts or terms of service.
The move is sure to enrage Silicon Valley barons who already loathe the CFPB (even as some of them have faced debanking). But the proposal should garner across-the-aisle support from Trumpian populists who were hit hardest by Big Tech censorship and debanking since 2021. As CFPB Director Rohit Chopra told me in an interview on Monday, “just because someone disagrees with corporate executives, that’s no grounds for losing their fundamental rights.”
Chopra, as I wrote last year, was one of the most serious populist reformers in the outgoing administration, along with antitrust tsars Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter and US trade representative Katherine Tai. He has watched with alarm as large firms have established what amounts to a vast, privatised regulatory system that could dramatically abridge Americans’ constitutional rights — with no means for ordinary people to push back, precisely because the system is privately controlled. When firms update their terms of service, “they slip in rules that would essentially delete federal and state laws,” Chopra said. “But when Congress or state legislatures pass laws, it doesn’t make sense for big companies to veto it.”
Take, for instance, PayPal’s warning to customers in 2022 that it would fine them up to $2,500 or close their accounts for promoting “misinformation”. When Chopra first got wind of PayPal’s proposed debanking rule, he forcefully denounced it and vowed to investigate before the company backed down. In November, his agency finalised a rule that specifically barred payment processors from debanking customers. And the CFPB is involved in ongoing litigation against the Chamber of Commerce and big banks which insist on a right to debank.
The new proposed rule, however, is Chopra’s most systematic attempt at tackling the problem. And it is sure to face intense opposition from the tech barons, even as they boast of their love of free speech. Most recently, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to Joe Rogan’s podcast to complain about CFPB oversight: “We had organisations looking into us that weren’t even involved in social media. We had the CFPB looking after us. I didn’t even know what that is. It’s some financial institution that Elizabeth Warren set up. We’re not a bank; what does Meta have to do with this?”
This is patently false. Over the last few years, Big Tech companies have been expanding their reach into the financial system by using or selling vast droves of data to shape the ads we see, which risks, Chopra noted, “creeping into a Chinese system”, involving the surveillance of our financial behavior to influence dynamic, algorithmic pricing.
The key question is whether the incoming Trump administration will follow Chopra’s path. The answer will turn on which of the Trumpian factions receives the upper hand: the techno-libertarian one led by Elon Musk, or populists who’ve recently found their most vocal anti-Big Tech champion in Steve Bannon. One thing’s for certain: working-class Trump voters, who are especially vulnerable to privatised surveillance and censorship, deserve a successor to Chopra who upholds his vision.
Sohrab Ahmari is the US editor of UnHerd and the author, most recently, of Tyranny, Inc: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What To Do About It
SohrabAhmari
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SubscribeThis will be an issue worth following in the weeks ahead. If Trump does not support what Chopra has been doing he will lose, and deserve to lose, a lot of support.
Let’s hope that Trump hires Chopra.
Why, merrily 4 years he did nothing about it.
Funny how Chopra only got around to this in the final days of his term. He had 4 years to “fix” it before but didn’t do so, why?
Banks are commercial institution, and should be subject to public accomodation laws. Aka they should have to service any customer at the displayed public price, same way a shop can’t refuse to sell you a listed item.
Private companies should be able to deny potential customers service for any reason they like.
Banks, however, are not private businesses in a truly contended market, but privileged members of a government-imposed cartel that creates the government-set currency ex nihilo, and then charge rent on the economy’s means of exchange and means of discharging tax obligations. They are granted privileges (and bailouts) like no other industry, and as such should be treated as supplying a public good, similar to how the post office can’t turn away customers who have opinions they don’t like.
This is a fascinating topic. The concept of banking here parallels sanctions, even though one operates at the individual level while the other functions at the national level. At their core, they seem to serve a similar purpose: exerting control, whether over individuals who say something deemed inappropriate online (with evidence, if it’s serious) or over countries with policies or actions others disagree with. Both fall within the same ballpark of restrictive measures.
Let’s address Zuckerberg. He was clearly disingenuous when he claimed ignorance about what his organization does or why it’s involved in financial transactions. The reality is, people do get paid through Facebook and Instagram, even if it’s as small as 50 cents. If you’re facilitating payments and have the ability to enforce financial restrictions, then you’re functioning as a bank. You can’t claim not to be a bank while acting like one—the irony of ignoring the inconsistency and, frankly, a bit absurd on his part.
Another intriguing point may be the situation with TikTok. It’s being banned, affecting around 17 million Americans, many of whom rely on the platform for significant income. What happens to these creators now? The government’s action essentially “de-platforms” them because they did not agree with algorithm, which mirrors the dynamic of banking sanctions on individuals. Ironically, now they are all giving their data to unregulated Chinese apps! the irony the irony! LOL
Seems like this story is still developing, and I believe there’s a missing nuance in this area that needs further exploration.
I’m open to learning more as the situation unfolds.
TikTok was banned at the behest of AIPAC.
Hopefully I’m wrong, but gut instinct tells me Trump will side with the Tech billionaires and scrap this proposed legislation
It’s a miracle!
Or maybe not …
Mark Zuckerberg bans FB Fact Checkers just in time before the ramp-up to promote ‘alternative facts’ by the Resistance on January 20th! Feed the Resistance with as much disinformation and misinformation as possible to rile them up in the hope of retaking the House and Senate in two years!
Perhaps Zuckerberg doesn’t want to explain his Fact Checkers’ decisions to the Trump Administration while they continue to not flag extremist progressive posts after January 20th.
And Joe Biden’s team is seeking to ban the de-banking of “extremists” just before Republicans take over the corridors of power. A term that, to the democrats, has meant anyone who disagrees with them. Because if Republicans use the same definition of “extremist” as Democrats, half of the coastal progressive enclaves will be de-banked and locked up in no time.
Seems that the systemic ‘tools of tyrants and dictators’ that were set up by progressives to control the citizenry may only be used by the ‘good side’, that is progressives, when they’re in power. The same tools are apparently ‘tyrannical’, but only in the hands of Republicans.
As an analogy, this is like a military force, while in process of retreating from their city, blows up the city’s stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction before departing. Not because they’re against using these weapons against innocent people, nor because they won’t manufacture and use these weapons again in the future (as is clearly the case considering their eight-year historical record on the matter), but merely because they don’t want these Weapons of Mass Destruction to be used against their side.
Oppression of the so-called “extremists” on the other side while Democrats remain in power, but demanding tolerance, love, forgiveness and equality for their own “extremists” while they are not in power.
I’m all for de-arming politics – a return to peace in society by returning to the rights enshrined in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. But safety protocols must be engraved into the law so that if Democrats return to power, they cannot return to their tyrannical oppression of innocent people. They need to slowly earn back the trust of America that they have squandered over the past eight years before they can be trusted with power again.
Very intriguing perspective. Thank you for posting your thoughts.