Anyone who pushes back on the establishment becomes a target.
Not even the sitting president of the United States is immune.
And Freedom Phone founder’s living hell will leave you in disgust.
Erik Finman created Freedom Phone to be an answer to Big Tech’s cozy relationship with the Democratic establishment.
After the Capitol Hill riot, Donald Trump was kicked off of every single major social media platform.
In response, Parler, a Twitter competitor, became the most downloaded app in the world.
And the establishment responded by kneecapping Parler.
Apple and Google, which essentially control the entire smartphone market, booted Parler from their app stores, severely hampering Parler’s ability to do business.
For good measure, Amazon yanked web hosting services from Parler.
PayPal became the problem for Freedom Phone, founder says
In order to insulate users from Apple and Google crackdowns, Finman created the Freedom Phone, which allowed people to load Parler onto their phones.
However, Finman ran into another serious bottleneck: payment processors.
After making $3.5 million off initial sales from the Freedom Phone, PayPal held onto over $1 million as the upstart businesses needed the cash.
Finman explained, “When I saw the money come in, I’m like ‘oh, I made it’…This is an American success story…And that’s about where the glorious story ends.”
In July 2021, six months after the Capitol Hill riot when the Democrats were branding all Republicans as “MAGA terrorists,” payment processors started holding Finman’s assets.
Accounts frozen for “almost a year”
Finman said, “PayPal and other payment processors, they ended up…freezing that money for what was almost a year…Do you know how tough that was for them? … They just scroll, click, and my life’s ruined for a year. That is what happened. You’re basically three and a half million dollars in debt instantly.”
Finman, who became a millionaire as a teenager by trading Bitcoin, had to sell assets in order to keep his Freedom Phone business afloat.
When confronted over the issue, PayPal wrote in a boilerplate response, “At PayPal we have a responsibility to keep our customers’ money safe…We can’t comment on a specific account, but in order to protect customers from fraud or risk, PayPal can place certain limitations on accounts where seller performance indicates a high risk to the company or customer, such as an unusually high number of buyer disputes or refund requests.”
The money that sticks to the walls
Finman believes that PayPal holding onto people’s cash is a money-making endeavor because they collect interest for as long as they hold it.
He explained, “It’s not a bug…It’s a feature…This is a big fat cash cow…They are making money by not giving you your money.”
If people want to compete with the establishment, they have to get around multiple bottlenecks.
Fortunately, conservatives and libertarians have been working on this problem.
Stay tuned to Unmuzzled News for any updates to this ongoing story.
