We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business • Hacker News Board

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#411

Post by sbov » Thu, May 09, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

mprev wrote: post #343

marcosdumay wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal should avoid doing vigilantism if they want to keep people's money under trust. It matters very little how despicable the company is, monetary services must not hold opinions unless explicitly told one by a local government.

This is BS. It matters very much to me as a customer of a financial services provider what sort of company I am keeping. For example, I don't want my bank to provide services to organised crime because I both feel that would be morally wrong and I think it'd open the bank's staff to influences that aren't in the best interests of other customers. Also, your argument isn't with PayPal; it's with the entire FS industry…

Organized crime is illegal and content farms are not, so this is a terrible example.

A better example might be highly religious community not wanting their bank to do business with companies focused on the gay and lesbian community.

This is a good example because: it is not illegal for a company to cater to the gay and lesbian community, it is not illegal to discriminate against gay and lesbian people in many states, and there are communities that would dislike this sort of company.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#412

Post by arielm » Thu, May 09, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

We use PayPal as “another” way to pay and withdraw money either weekly or when it reaches a very low set amount. It’s kind of a hassle, but if this happens at least we don’t have to worry about money we already earned.

In general, PayPal has been losing a lot of traction over the years, and is one of the reasons eBay spun them out a while back. Lack of “decent” support and a week to reply to a critical email just isn’t acceptable in 2019 + the UI really isn’t that user friendly when you look at Square Cash or Apple Pay in iMessage.

I won’t be surprised if they don’t exist within the next five years. Sure, they’re still integrated into a lot of things, but one competition becoming much bigger can change all of that quickly.

I don’t think they’d be missed...

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#413

Post by mcherm » Thu, May 09, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

dTal wrote: post #111

55555 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yes, their decision is always final. Perhaps their decision to close your account is always final, but don't lose all hope after having your funds frozen. I had 25-100k frozen (can't remember how much), and picked up the phone and called them and it was unfrozen within 48 hours. Paypal is god-awful though and should be used as little as possible.

Why do we call it "frozen"? It sounds more like "stolen" to me.

PayPay calls it "frozen" because that is the term that actual regulated banks use when they temporarily deny access to an account because of a government order or a fraud investigation.

It is to PayPal's benefit to use terminology that makes them look like a bank.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#414

Post by arielm » Thu, May 09, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #229

gotland_ wrote: post #71

Don't know if it is the reason for the ban, but Niteos main product seems to be a service for creating spam networks. https://www.easyblognetworks.com , https://niteo.co/projects

Thank you! After reading the story I headed to the comments to look for this exact comment! This story was super, super sketchy! The tell was it didn't at all mention the products or services they sell. Since any normal person would mention the products/services they sell front-and-center as key information to the story, I went ahead and assumed the problem was the products or services they offer were illegal/sketchy…

Same! And it’s definitely sketchy, but...

PayPal could have at least pointed towards the clause in their terms that is being used for the rejection.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#415

Post by bryanrasmussen » Thu, May 09, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

hackermailman wrote: post #337

shams93 wrote: post #306

Then if you're an indie musician on Bandcamp they give you no option but to use PayPal however if you're not on Bandcamp nobody is going to buy your music directly from your website anymore and for underground acts Bandcamp is better than Spotify but the whole forced use of PayPal there meant for a decade I couldn't use Bandcamp until I got a new PayPal account after they killed the account I had had for 15 years.

Most indie acts here sign up with a tiny indie record label who handles the profiles on bandcamp for them and deals with paypal bs. People will still buy vinyl and merch from your own site.

that's great, so when paypal shuts down the tiny indie label they can get a bunch of acts all at once!

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#416

Post by MrStonedOne » Thu, May 09, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #322

chii wrote: post #264

paypal has no business in regulating what software their customers are allowed or not allowed to sell. Even if it's spam creation software. If it's not illegal to sell, it should not be blocked by paypal. If the software is spam and is bad for society, let society introduce a law to ban the software, the same way you can't sell drugs using paypal. This moral policing by businesses is bad for society - and lets busine…

I disagree. Freedom of association is an important right. Generally companies (and individuals!) should be free to choose who they do business with. We should only limit that freedom when there's some significant social harm. (E.g., we don't let businesses discriminate by race.) I also think it's ridiculous to suggest that we should drastically increase the number of laws so that everything bad is explicitly illegal.…

>Freedom of association is an important right. Generally companies (and individuals!) should be free to choose who they do business with.

They are, but we are free to be mad at them when they do this in assine ways, as we are free to also decide not to associate with businesses that excessively invoke their freedom of association, for either reliability reasons (businesses that cut ties over ever changing reasons are not a reliable company to do business with) , or ideological ones (we don't like why they are invoking the right).

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#417

Post by arielm » Thu, May 09, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #303

chii wrote: post #264

paypal has no business in regulating what software their customers are allowed or not allowed to sell. Even if it's spam creation software. If it's not illegal to sell, it should not be blocked by paypal. If the software is spam and is bad for society, let society introduce a law to ban the software, the same way you can't sell drugs using paypal. This moral policing by businesses is bad for society - and lets busine…

Literally 100% of payment processors heavily "regulate" what their customers sell/do and who is profitable to do business with and what clients are profitable to associate with. For example, if an industry has a humongous chargeback and fraud rate, then they become unprofitable and get dropped. This is why American Express stopped allowing porn (there was news articles about it at the time and they went on record say…

I’m pretty sure banks and credit card institutions, aka those paying, regulate what their services can be used for. So it isn’t strictly PayPal.

PayPal just needs to be more clear/transparent about that.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#418

Post by novaleaf » Thu, May 09, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #334

novaleaf wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to generalize, you shouldn't keep your money in any 3rd party longer than necessary.

Is a bank a 3rd party in this argument?

no, but you shouldn't keep your money in a bank either. Put it in an investment vehicle to at least break even with inflation.

the 3rd parties I'm referring to are things like work marketplaces like upwork, even gift cards or undeposited checks.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#419

Post by bryanrasmussen » Thu, May 09, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

lukeholder wrote: post #308

shams93 wrote: post #306

Then if you're an indie musician on Bandcamp they give you no option but to use PayPal however if you're not on Bandcamp nobody is going to buy your music directly from your website anymore and for underground acts Bandcamp is better than Spotify but the whole forced use of PayPal there meant for a decade I couldn't use Bandcamp until I got a new PayPal account after they killed the account I had had for 15 years.

Longest sentence ever, upvoted.

not even close: http://www.gavroche.org/vhugo/sentence.shtml

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#420

Post by lawn » Thu, May 09, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #124

lawn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be obvious from the context though. "crypto" is also shortened from cryptography, why should it be exclusive to that?

"Crypto" should not be exclusive to mean "cryptography" however it is undesirable to reuse a shortening within the same field. Which is true in this example given "cryptocurrency" relies on "cryptography". Whoever came up with the term "crypto" for "cryptocurrency" did not think it through enough. Especially on any technical website, the usage of the newer and less relevant [1] shortening is unnecessary. TL;DR simply…

I agree that they it shouldn't be used if it's possible to mix them up (crypto shouldn't be used to mean cryptography either if it's possible to mix it up with cryptocurrencies). This was not such an instance.

The English language is ever changing, we re-purpose and come up with new words all the time. In daily use "cryptocurrencies" is long to type and say, so when the context is clear it's easier to just use "crypto".

Note: I actually try to use "cryptocurrencies" too.