News

Apple disables Apple Pay functionality on hate group websites

Apple has taken a stand against websites retailing clothing and other paraphernalia from hate groups and white nationalists.

On Wednesday, the confirmed to the press that it had disabled Apple Pay functionality for a number of websites selling T-shirts displaying the slogan β€œWhite Pride”, sweaters featuring Nazi logos and a bumper sticker depicting a vehicle careening into stick-figure demonstrators.

The company also disabled Apple Pay functionality from smaller websites such as vinlandclothing.com and americanvikings.com, both of which retail clothing with Nazi logos.

Apple’s decision to distance itself from hate sites comes at a time when various tech firms are facing intense scrutiny over allowing websites or social media accounts of white supremacist organisations and white nationalists.
Earlier this week, Google and GoDaddy both removed the registration abilities of white supremacist blog The Daily Stormer.



It is clearly stated in Apple’s Acceptable Use Guidelines that users are not allowed to incorporate services such as Apple Pay into websites that β€œpromote hate, violence, or intolerance based on race, age, gender, gender identity, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.’”

The owner of the americanvikings.com website, Brian James, said he saw himself as a pro-white civic nationalist and told the press he was not even aware that his business had ever used Apple Pay to receive money.

He described the website as a hobby and did not seem particularly perturbed over losing payment functionality or the possibility of it being suspended.

An unrepentant James said that he was unfamiliar with the legal aspects of free speech on the Internet or regarding owners of hosting firms, adding: β€œif you run a business you have a right to decide who or not you do business with. If they don’t like me, they don’t have to do business with me.”

Before you go

After spending over 20 years working with Macs, both old and new, theres a tool I think would be useful to every Mac owner who is experiencing performance issues.

CleanMyMac is highest rated all-round cleaning app for the Mac, it can quickly diagnose and solve a whole plethora of common (but sometimes tedious to fix) issues at the click of a button. It also just happens to resolve many of the issues covered in the speed up section of this site, so Download CleanMyMac to get your Mac back up to speed today.

mac-pc

Tags

About the author

Chris

I've been a passionate evangelist for Apple and the Macintosh throughout my working life, my first love was a Quadra 605 working with a small creative agency in the south of Norfolk UK in the mid 1990's, I later progressed to other roles in other Macintosh dominated industries, first as a Senior graphic designer at a small printing company and then a production manager at Guardian Media Group. As the publishing and printing sector wained I moved into Internet Marketing and in 2006 co-founded blurtit.com which grew to become one the top 200 visited sites in the US (according to Quantcast), at its peak receiving over 15 million visits per month. For the last ten years I have worked as an Affiliate and Consultant to many different business and start ups, my key skill set being online marketing, on page monetisation, landing page optimisation and traffic generation, if you would like to hire me or discuss your current project please reach out to me here.

You can also follow me on: and

Add Comment

Click here to post a comment

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.