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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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a whole lot of conspiracy speculation in there, especially the idea of "SPLC's anti-conservative purge". Simply put, being associated with hard-right political figures is seen as problematic by Mastercard, Patreon, Paypal etc., and they are trying to minimize their risk, because they don't want to lose business. They have to do this, due to their obligations to shareholders, boards of directors and advertiser…

Or... they could just not do anything. They're payment processors and moving legal funds is their purpose. Nobody knows they underpin a lot of these payments and being invisible infrastructure is their advantage.

Getting involved makes everything worse as now a larger population knows what's happening. It's a perfect example of the Streisand effect.

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

#232
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?

I dont think there needs to be a trademark to not want to cause confusion. The majority of people in our field know that this is hacker news, sometimes they talk about it to someone who doesn't know. That new person finds "the hacker news" and thinks that their coworker is a 1337 hax0r.

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Patreon is for a small group of people. Meaning, the mass audience goes there because a small group of creators told them that's how they can support them. If that small group of creators finds a better alternative, and tells their audience to support them at the alternative rather than Patreon, they will go there. SubscribeStar was enjoying a good amount of success as a Patreon alternative once a few users…

If the payment processors are really who is behind the Patreon/SubscribeStar debacle, which certainly seems to be the case, then short of bitcoin, which is a horrible solution, how can a Patreon competitor do any better?

No idea! Maybe they'll be a middleman for Bitcoin.

We have to wait and see.

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

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a whole lot of conspiracy speculation in there, especially the idea of "SPLC's anti-conservative purge". Simply put, being associated with hard-right political figures is seen as problematic by Mastercard, Patreon, Paypal etc., and they are trying to minimize their risk, because they don't want to lose business. They have to do this, due to their obligations to shareholders, boards of directors and advertiser…

> There's a whole lot of conspiracy speculation in there, especially the idea of "SPLC's anti-conservative purge".

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/maajid-nawaz-splc-apolog...

SPLC Apologizes, Pays Settlement to Islamic Reformer It Wrongly Labeled ‘Anti-Muslim Extremist’

The Southern Poverty Law Center has reached a settlement with liberal Islamic reformer Maajid Nawaz and his organization, the Quilliam Foundation, for wrongly including them on its now-defunct list of “anti-Muslim extremists.”

The SPLC announced Monday that it has agreed to pay Nawaz and Quilliam $3.375 million “to fund their work to fight anti-Muslim bigotry and extremism.” The settlement was the result of a lawsuit Nawaz filed in April over his inclusion on the SPLC’s “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.”

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_6646994?ec_carp=612494826...

Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson has been added to the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s (SPLC) list of anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender extremists.

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/29/guidestar-rem...

Gunmen have twice targeted conservatives specifically cited by the SPLC for hate: Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, who was shot June 14 by a fan of the SPLC Facebook page, and the Family Research Council, whose security guard was wounded in 2012 by a man who said he found the FRC on the SPLC’s list of “anti-gay groups.”

As far as conservative organizations are concerned, being labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center isn’t just annoying — it’s dangerous.

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

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a whole lot of conspiracy speculation in there, especially the idea of "SPLC's anti-conservative purge". Simply put, being associated with hard-right political figures is seen as problematic by Mastercard, Patreon, Paypal etc., and they are trying to minimize their risk, because they don't want to lose business. They have to do this, due to their obligations to shareholders, boards of directors and advertiser…

> There's a whole lot of conspiracy speculation in there, especially the idea of "SPLC's anti-conservative purge". https://www.nationalreview.com/news/maajid-nawaz-splc-apolog... SPLC Apologizes, Pays Settlement to Islamic Reformer It Wrongly Labeled ‘Anti-Muslim Extremist’ The Southern Poverty Law Center has reached a settlement with liberal Islamic reformer Maajid Nawaz and his organization, the Quilliam Foundation…

SPLC serves a very important role of shining a light on dangerous extremists, such as this guy:

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/12/20/longtime-anti...

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

#236
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you still need a 3rd party to realistically convert USD into BTC. at this point, might as well trade in casino chips. (see gnu taller for a less cassino-like alternative to payments)

this third party is not linked to where you want to send them. anybody can get BTC from fiat conversion and send it wherever they want without censorship. That's what we are talking about right?

yes, not linked to the destination of the funds, but still very much required.

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

#237
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…

"you’re not recording, I’m not recording"

Funny how it ended up in a transcript

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

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a whole lot of conspiracy speculation in there, especially the idea of "SPLC's anti-conservative purge". https://www.nationalreview.com/news/maajid-nawaz-splc-apolog... SPLC Apologizes, Pays Settlement to Islamic Reformer It Wrongly Labeled ‘Anti-Muslim Extremist’ The Southern Poverty Law Center has reached a settlement with liberal Islamic reformer Maajid Nawaz and his organization, the Quilliam Foundation…

SPLC serves a very important role of shining a light on dangerous extremists, such as this guy: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/12/20/longtime-anti...

...at the time of writing the video calling for lone wolf retaliation was viewed just shy of 250 times on Facebook...

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting a business off from the financial system seems like a fairly harsh punishment for plagiarism, especially when there are other routes for a remedy. We may never know if that was the reason, though, so it's hard to measure whether justice was done or not.

Well, there's plagiarism and then there's impersonating a well-known (admittedly in niche circles) brand to make money. I think they made a good call here.

So, rather than using our existing copyright / trademark system to handle cases of brand impersonation or stealing content, we're just going to rely on payment processor companies to punish people? That sounds like a really bad idea.
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