Don't use Paypal, or you risk randomly losing your money.
PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”
51–60 of 216 posts
Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”
#52I forgot what happened once to my PayPal account but I remember calling them because I knew the issue I had couldn’t be resolved over the phone. The person on the other end had a canned response to my problem that didn’t answer why my account was the way it was. I just remember saying that I wanted to buy things, I have money to spend, why do you not want me to spend money with your service. Brief pause and then she said my account would be active again in a few minutes.
Don’t even get me started on eBay. Support is non-existent for my issue so I had to lie in a different support request to get my issue looked at. Even then what they need me to verify transactions on my account is impossible.
Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”
#53Based on my experience as a developer and user I can't understand how PayPal got so big and ubiquitous. I had the worst experience ever in trying to set up our recurring billing system with them, wasting several days of work, to the point that I simply gave up, switched to Stripe, and got everything up and running, in production, in hours. Even as a consumer I had a terrible experience when trying to send money abroa…
Perhaps part of the reason was the ease of access for minors. I'm now over 18, but when PayPal got popular, my friends and I were under 18 so we weren't allowed to purchase stuff (like video games) online since we didn't have our own credit/debit cards. PayPal used to not verify your age so it was perfect for this type of stuff.
Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”
#54Per [0], a possible answer to this seems to be that an arms dealer had connections to a company called Tardigrade Ltd. and all transactions with firms like these are prohibited which is why the word "Tardigrade" made it into PayPal's filter. As long as companies like PayPal have issues like that, or with moderation in case of Youtube, Twitter or Facebook, I'd claim neither of these companies have actually solved scal…
I don’t know if PayPal ever claimed otherwise, but I’ve suspected that much of the AI powered moderation online is simply advanced keyword matching. We have to start accepting that either websites are unwilling to or unable to do moderation in any meaningful way, unless they hire human moderators at huge costs. Hearing an interview with the country for Facebook on Danish radio just two weeks ago, it’s pretty clear to…
Another example for keyword matching: I work on a German/Polish team. We sent money for a birthday present from Germany to Poland. Someone used the colleagues' nickname "Kuba" in the subject line. The Paypal account of the Polish colleague was blocked afterwards. But he could resolve the issue via support afaik.
Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know if PayPal ever claimed otherwise, but I’ve suspected that much of the AI powered moderation online is simply advanced keyword matching. We have to start accepting that either websites are unwilling to or unable to do moderation in any meaningful way, unless they hire human moderators at huge costs. Hearing an interview with the country for Facebook on Danish radio just two weeks ago, it’s pretty clear to…
Another example for keyword matching: I work on a German/Polish team. We sent money for a birthday present from Germany to Poland. Someone used the colleagues' nickname "Kuba" in the subject line. The Paypal account of the Polish colleague was blocked afterwards. But he could resolve the issue via support afaik.
I'm guessing it's because of Cuba.
I'd wonder why the US is still embargoing Cuba after all these years. What's the endgame? What's the goal? The Cuban regime is still there and the Soviets are long gone. It seems petty and spiteful.
Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”
#56Don't use Paypal, or you risk randomly losing your money.
Pretty much. I'll refer to something that happened to me a few years back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18783724
Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
PayPal compliance is a very different problem to social media moderation. Financial regulations require any transaction that is "suspicious" in any way of having links to terrorism financing or money laundering be reviewed, and there are large and personal penalties for not doing so. And a review is expected to be more like auditing your customers entire financial history than just asking what they meant by a word, s…
This is the kind of thinking that lead to the TSA putting infants, and even a US Senator, on the US no-fly list because their names matched those of "known terrorists." The Washington concept of NATIONAL SECURITY is a brain-eating parasite that seemingly renders compliance managers unable to tell the difference between categorically different things, such as US Senators and IRA terrorists, or Serbian companies named…
> seemingly renders compliance managers unable to tell the difference between categorically different things
Because it renders them liable. The whole system will turn against you if you give it an opportunity to nail you for using discretion.
And this happens everywhere in society after a certain size is reached due to the need to hold people accountable without actually being able to fully evaluate who or what is to blame (due to the situation being too complex or not having all the facts/data). But politically, someone(s) has to go down.
Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
PayPal compliance is a very different problem to social media moderation. Financial regulations require any transaction that is "suspicious" in any way of having links to terrorism financing or money laundering be reviewed, and there are large and personal penalties for not doing so. And a review is expected to be more like auditing your customers entire financial history than just asking what they meant by a word, s…
Well completing Know Your Customer checks and audits is sort of their job, isn’t it? They provide a service, saying that they will process payments unless the payment is prohibited by government sanctions. But instead of carrying out actual due diligence, they just block anything remotely related and put the onus and cost of doing their own job on their customers. At least they should have a better process to start p…
>saying that they will process payments unless the payment is prohibited by government sanctions
if they say that they will process payments unless prohibited by government sanctions and then do not process payments that is not prohibited I guess they would be getting sued for those payments.
Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
PayPal compliance is a very different problem to social media moderation. Financial regulations require any transaction that is "suspicious" in any way of having links to terrorism financing or money laundering be reviewed, and there are large and personal penalties for not doing so. And a review is expected to be more like auditing your customers entire financial history than just asking what they meant by a word, s…
Well completing Know Your Customer checks and audits is sort of their job, isn’t it? They provide a service, saying that they will process payments unless the payment is prohibited by government sanctions. But instead of carrying out actual due diligence, they just block anything remotely related and put the onus and cost of doing their own job on their customers. At least they should have a better process to start p…
Yes they would, the fines are up to 250,000 per incident. If you share a name with someone on the AML list, good luck opening up a financial account anywhere and if you do manage to get an account, being able to fund the account from another source.
Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
PayPal compliance is a very different problem to social media moderation. Financial regulations require any transaction that is "suspicious" in any way of having links to terrorism financing or money laundering be reviewed, and there are large and personal penalties for not doing so. And a review is expected to be more like auditing your customers entire financial history than just asking what they meant by a word, s…
But for regular banks service to private citizens is also compulsory, so they can't just choose the easy path by blocking a transaction based on keyword filters, they must do the intended auditing. So for them there is a balance, for paypal there isn't.
I would say it’s not much different with regular banks in the US, as they can and do refuse service with no recourse if you do something they seem suspicious.