(Natural News) If you don't like the way a business operates, you are always free to start your own – at least in America. However, some of the services that companies in the tech space rely on are doing something very un-American by making life difficult for those businesses whose politics they disagree with.

FreeStartr was set up to help people raise money for creative, social, journalistic and charitable projects, particularly those that have been censored or banned on other platforms for exercising free speech. Widely viewed as a free speech alternative to Patreon, which has discriminated against conservative voices in the past, its star had been rising – until payment processor Stripe put the brakes on it for political reasons

The CEO of FreeStartr, award-winning investigative journalist Charles C. Johnson, expressed his disappointment in the decision, writing an open letter on his website about the problem of "tech apartheid." He said that his company had record low chargebacks, so Stripe's move was clearly a political one – especially when you consider that other companies whose accounts were also suspended at the same time happened to be created by supporters of Trump as well.

Johnson said that FreeStartr.com stands for the Bill of Rights, something that he feels the founders of Stripe, as non-Americans, may not fully grasp.

He wrote: "Stripe seems to be deliberately shutting down businesses whose politics it doesn't like. Political orientation is a protected category in California. There have been cases brought against businesses that refuse to serve conservatives or liberals. Why not Stripe? If Stripe's move isn't illegal, it is certainly fraudulent."