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VALLEY CENTER, CA, June 22, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A craftsman whose six year-old son inspired his small business making American flags is fighting back against Big Tech's attempt to crush his small business.
“Thank you for all your patience and support,” James Staake told customers over Twitter on May 14.
“Together we will show Big Tech that the American flag cannot be canceled!”
James and Ginger Staake, the owners of Your American Flag Store, discovered early this year that Facebook, PayPal, Google, and Shopify had deemed their handmade, wooden flags a “questionable product.” One of the Staakes’ flags had President Donald Trump’s picture painted on it, and the woodworker and painter experienced a drop in sales of 90% — right when Trump himself was being shoved off the internet by Big Tech.
“On January 7, we woke up and like the rest of the world saw that Donald Trump was de-platformed and Parler was taken off, but we didn’t know … that thousands of companies, like my own, were demonetized and kind of attacked,” James Staake told Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt in February.
At first the small business owner just saw a “steep decline” in visits to his website. After a week of low sales, Staake began to investigate what was wrong. Shopify wasn’t much help, but light dawned when he tried to take out an ad on Facebook.
“That’s when I found out that our ad privileges had been suspended,” he said.
All that Facebook told Staake when he protested is that the products he sells is “against their community standards.”
Staake launched his business after his six year-old son Max asked him to begin a family business. The Your American Flag Store website explains how one day Max told his father: “I want to build American Flags with you and I want Mommy to put artwork on them.”
Staake acknowledged that not everyone would want his flags celebrating the Second Amendment in their homes, but he stated also that he sells military flags and flags for first responders. He revealed that Facebook had pulled down ads for this several of his flags in the past but said he never thought that the social media giant would “pull all of our rights to advertise completely for any flag.”
“It’s a shame,” he said. “It’s shocking. It's maddening. It hurts.”
PayPal has joined Facebook in making it difficult for Your American Flag Store to continue business. On February 2, 2021, the company put a hold on the store’s account and has continued to withhold tens of thousands of dollars in sales.
In late May, the Center for American Liberty, working with the Dhillon Law Group, issued PayPal a Notice of Dispute, informing the company that it is “destroying” its client.
“Ever since Your American Flag Store’s launch in February 2018, Mr. and Mrs. Staake have worked hard to develop and expand their company’s wooden flag-making business,” wrote lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon.
“As the business continued to grow, Your American Flag Store turned to PayPal to seamlessly handle all of its customers’ credit card transactions — as PayPal promises its business customers it will do,” Dhillon continued.
“Your American Flag Store has been a customer of PayPal’s since March 3, 2020. Over the course of its relationship with PayPal, Your American Flag Store has relied on the promised continuity of PayPal’s payment system with respect to the processing of its customers’ payments. But PayPal’s promises have been hollow, and PayPal is now destroying this small American business by interfering with its customer contracts and converting customer payments for its own purposes.
Dhillon described how a PayPal employee calling himself “Scotty” was “argumentative and hostile” towards the Staakes and said that he “was putting a hold” on their PayPal account to protect their customers from their business. “Scotty” accused James Staake of having a “shady business model” and, when challenged, said that Your American Flag Store was selling “questionable products.”
PayPal did release some of the payments, but not enough so that Staake could afford to deliver all the ordered products. On May 13 he contacted PayPal about this and was told that PayPal “would not even consider releasing more funds until August 3, 2021.”
“In fact, he was informed that if he had not shipped all the custom wooden flags to customers by August 3, 2021, PayPal would not be releasing any more funds,” Dhillon wrote.
“In other words, after promising to seamlessly process payments for its customers, PayPal held onto funds belonging to Your American Flag Store and demanded that the company and/or its owner, go into debt in order to ship the very same customer orders PayPal had promised to seamlessly fulfill.”
Staake is far from alone in experiencing this kind of persecution by Big Tech. LifeSiteNews was censored by Big Tech this past February, being de-platformed from both Facebook and YouTube. Parler was blacklisted by Amazon, Google, and Apple in January 2021. Doctors and medical professionals speaking for alternatives to the COVID-19 vaccine as treatment against the coronavirus are also being censored.
Florida is the first state to fight back against Big Tech and with the new SB 7072 law in place, citizens can sue the Tech companies for damages up to $100,000. Under the new law, small businesses are protected from unfair censorship, shadow banning and/or de-platforming from social media and tech companies. Social media companies are also now unable to ban Florida users without warning, as they must now give a seven-day heads-up before a potential ban, explaining the reason underlying, and offering the chance to resolve the issue.