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PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

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Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#61
post #20

Paypal has done this multiple times, here are some incidents. https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/My-Account/Permanent-BAN... https://medium.com/@puntofisso/paypal-closed-my-account-with... https://www.elliott.org/blog/banned-from-palpal-account-limi... https://www.success.grownupgeek.com/index.php/2008/04/05/pay... Completely relying on any third party is a bad idea. We should consider the risks when we signup to an…

Same thing happened to me years ago: https://jakeseliger.com/2011/12/09/december-2011-links-paypa... . Why anyone uses Paypal today is beyond me. Why anyone doesn't expect this is really beyond me.

What are the alternatives?

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#62
post #20

Paypal has done this multiple times, here are some incidents. https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/My-Account/Permanent-BAN... https://medium.com/@puntofisso/paypal-closed-my-account-with... https://www.elliott.org/blog/banned-from-palpal-account-limi... https://www.success.grownupgeek.com/index.php/2008/04/05/pay... Completely relying on any third party is a bad idea. We should consider the risks when we signup to an…

Same thing happened to me years ago: https://jakeseliger.com/2011/12/09/december-2011-links-paypa... . Why anyone uses Paypal today is beyond me. Why anyone doesn't expect this is really beyond me.

The percentage of links to your blog that you post in your comments is extremely high and extremely notable. Make of that what you will.

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#63
post #21

Off topic, but "The Hacker News" should really change their name to "The Other Hacker News"

why? has ycombinator trademarked/registered hacker news?

Yes/no (in the United States).

In other words, they claim a common law trademark on it [1], but they have not registered it with the USPTO. This means they probably have some trademark protection, at least in some states, but not nearly as much as if they had a registered mark. For example, they might be able to get an injunction against a similar user in some states, but probably not damages or attorney fees. With a registered mark, they would be able to go for damages and attorney fees.

[1] See reply to you from 'disconnected' for link to claim.

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#64
post #5
post #3

Please note that "The Hacker News" is a separate site unrelated to "Hacker News".

This name confusion seems intentional and makes me default to unsympathetic, even though I suspect PayPal’s issue is not related to a name confusion root cause.

Even though the website seems to have a history of plagiarism I don't think they named the website after HN. By going through their about us section it looks like they started the website in 2010 as a cybersecurity and hacking news platform. The Hacker News is kind of a no-brainer name for this kind of website. Also THN seems to be an Indian website. I think HN was not at all popular outside the Silicon Valley in 2010. So no reason for them to name the website after HN that had an extremely small and passionate userbase. There is a good chance that they may not have even known about HN when they started THN. The name defintely has confused a lot of people though. Even Elon Musk seems to be following THN over HN in Twitter :)

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#65
post #20

Paypal has done this multiple times, here are some incidents. https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/My-Account/Permanent-BAN... https://medium.com/@puntofisso/paypal-closed-my-account-with... https://www.elliott.org/blog/banned-from-palpal-account-limi... https://www.success.grownupgeek.com/index.php/2008/04/05/pay... Completely relying on any third party is a bad idea. We should consider the risks when we signup to an…

Well everyone who wants to accept payments on the internet ultimately relies on VisaMasterCard. They will shut you off and get other payment processors to shut you off like happened to SubscribeStar when they set up as a Patreon competitor. https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/1076886857445711872?s... Long twitter thread on the relation between MasterCard, Visa and Patreon and how the credit card cartel is attempti…

Scary stuff. That's the real reason to use and encourage Crypto: to avoid political censorhip and control. Its a shame it was co-opted by mining and speculation.

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#66

They also reportedly shutdown Subscribe Star recently, when people started to use it instead of Patreon, in the wake of the Patreon banning of some prominent You Tuber. This isn't working. The free market doesn't seem to work well in the tech world, where we have all powerfull monopolies controlling what we say, what we know and what we buy. We need new laws.

What free market are you talking about? There is no free market in the financial sector. Everything is regulated and licensed.

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#67
post #20

Paypal has done this multiple times, here are some incidents. https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/My-Account/Permanent-BAN... https://medium.com/@puntofisso/paypal-closed-my-account-with... https://www.elliott.org/blog/banned-from-palpal-account-limi... https://www.success.grownupgeek.com/index.php/2008/04/05/pay... Completely relying on any third party is a bad idea. We should consider the risks when we signup to an…

Yup, they froze the Neo900 project's funds and caused them to miss a bunch of supplier contract deadlines: https://neo900.org/news/paypal-trouble-delays-project

Basically killed the project. It's still sortof moving, but a shell of what it once was.

PayPal's size allows them to dictate terms like "We'll screw you worse than a bank but you can't sue us like a bank", and nobody's been able to take them down yet.

One can only hope.

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#68

They also reportedly shutdown Subscribe Star recently, when people started to use it instead of Patreon, in the wake of the Patreon banning of some prominent You Tuber. This isn't working. The free market doesn't seem to work well in the tech world, where we have all powerfull monopolies controlling what we say, what we know and what we buy. We need new laws.

> They also reportedly shutdown Subscribe Star recently, when people started to use it instead of Patreon, in the wake of the Patreon banning of some prominent You Tuber. This isn't working. The free market doesn't seem to work well in the tech world, where we have all powerfull monopolies controlling what we say, what we know and what we buy. We need new laws.

This is not what a "free market" means. Paypal is not remotely a monopoly, nor is Patreon.

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#69

They also reportedly shutdown Subscribe Star recently, when people started to use it instead of Patreon, in the wake of the Patreon banning of some prominent You Tuber. This isn't working. The free market doesn't seem to work well in the tech world, where we have all powerfull monopolies controlling what we say, what we know and what we buy. We need new laws.

Can you expand on this line of reasoning a bit? Specifically, what's stopping a competitor from eating Paypal's lunch right now? They have a majority market share now, but disruption still seems a possibility. Often it seems would-be disruptors get bought by the goliaths, but that's on the owners of the disruptors making their company purchasable such as through accepting investor money. On the flip side, if we did g…

  Specifically, what's stopping a competitor
  from eating Paypal's lunch right now?
Perhaps being a payment processor is actually difficult, and Paypal is doing a tolerably good job?

I only hear people bitching about their paypal account being locked once or twice a year, whereas I assume paypal deal with hundreds of attempts at credit card fraud, chargebacks, complaints about ebay goods and suchlike every day.

Re: PayPal has permanently banned The Hacker News and hold funds for 180 days

#70
post #20

Paypal has done this multiple times, here are some incidents. https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/My-Account/Permanent-BAN... https://medium.com/@puntofisso/paypal-closed-my-account-with... https://www.elliott.org/blog/banned-from-palpal-account-limi... https://www.success.grownupgeek.com/index.php/2008/04/05/pay... Completely relying on any third party is a bad idea. We should consider the risks when we signup to an…

"completely relying on a 3rd party..."

Okay, agreed it's not ideal, but for payment processing what's the alternative?

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