Some are questioning whether Venmo and Paypal are acting in too heavy-handed a fashion. At nonprofit National Iranian American Council, policy director Jamal Abdi says: “I don’t envy these companies for having to deal with these injunctions.” But while he understands certain terms being flagged for security reasons, he considers PayPal’s apparent decision to flag a relatively generic term like “Persian” is discriminatory. “In this case they’ve clearly sort of erred on the wrong side of this,” Abdi says.
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