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PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

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Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#151

Post by Silhouette »

scarface74 wrote: post #136
Silhouette wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politicians often ask for silly things in connection with technologies they don't really understand, to achieve goals they don't really expect to achieve, just in order to look good to a certain part of the electorate. Consider an analogy between modern social media sites and something like a phone network or postal mail service. What would happen if a politician suggested that phone companies or their national posta…

Yet posters on HN are the first ones to want the government to regulate tech.

And I agree with them. Tech is far too unregulated today, and this causes massive damage to our societies.

But regulations should always be reasonable and proportionate, and expecting a social network to police all human communication via their system for vaguely specified bad content does not seem to clear that bar.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#152

Post by _JamesA_ »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #146
CydeWeys wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like poor branding on the part of the cigar brands (at least for online sales).

When Castro took over the owners of the brands fled and took the rights to the brands with them. At the same time the Cuban government kept making the cigars under the same name. So for every major brand you will find 2 in the world, one Cuban, one not.

Bacardi (Puerto Rico) has started copying the Cuban Havana Club rum as well.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/havana-club-v-havana...

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#153

Post by Silhouette »

quintushoratius wrote: post #111
Silhouette wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politicians often ask for silly things in connection with technologies they don't really understand, to achieve goals they don't really expect to achieve, just in order to look good to a certain part of the electorate. Consider an analogy between modern social media sites and something like a phone network or postal mail service. What would happen if a politician suggested that phone companies or their national posta…

That's a terrible analogy, for two reasons. 1. Post and phone have an expectation of privacy so the government can't review them (in the US, at least) 2. There is already a system in place to review all phone calls in real time. It's run by several Western intelligence agencies to get around the monitoring rules mentioned in #1.

1 is merely an accident of history and a subjective question of what you consider a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Even if 2 is true, I doubt that system is preventing people from discussing controversial subjects like, say, climate change or politics, even if what the speakers are saying is untrue.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#154

Post by scarface74 »

Silhouette wrote: post #151
scarface74 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet posters on HN are the first ones to want the government to regulate tech.

And I agree with them. Tech is far too unregulated today, and this causes massive damage to our societies. But regulations should always be reasonable and proportionate, and expecting a social network to police all human communication via their system for vaguely specified bad content does not seem to clear that bar.

Yet the representatives who are going to pass laws are the same people who grilled Zuckerberg for Twitter’s practices.

Do you really trust their competence? All the laws being passed and all we got was shitty pop ups on every website saying “we use cookies”. Of course we also got the DMCA....

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#155

Post by URSpider94 »

imnotjames wrote: post #123
_Microft wrote: post #7

Per [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…

PayPal gets a list of banned strings from the Office of Foreign Asset controls. If any match those strings it's flagged for a review. This is more or less legally required for any company that moves money in the United States of America. You will probably find the same issues with the same terms on any other banking for financial body. Technically, these aren't being blocked. They're being audited. The payments will…

The payments won’t still go through - if you look at the links, PayPal is returning a big red error message to customers. It doesn’t look like PayPal is doing any kind of review, they are just blocking all transactions with Tardigrade in the associated text anywhere.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#156

Post by URSpider94 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #113
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

evidently not given the downvotes, but then I don't understand, if their terms of service say we pay out unless the payment would be of type X and then they keep from paying out on payments of type Y they have violated their terms of service and thus would be open to being sued.

PayPal can pretty much always refuse to process any given transaction. They are not keeping anyone’s money, they are just refusing to accept a transaction request. There’s no money to “pay out.”

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#157

Post by floatingatoll »

imnotjames wrote: post #123
_Microft wrote: post #7

Per [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…

PayPal gets a list of banned strings from the Office of Foreign Asset controls. If any match those strings it's flagged for a review. This is more or less legally required for any company that moves money in the United States of America. You will probably find the same issues with the same terms on any other banking for financial body. Technically, these aren't being blocked. They're being audited. The payments will…

I hope an arms dealer names themself eBay Arms. I’m against arms dealers and PayPal and this would destroy PayPal.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#158

Post by SethMurphy »

_Microft wrote: post #144
imnotjames wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal gets a list of banned strings from the Office of Foreign Asset controls. If any match those strings it's flagged for a review. This is more or less legally required for any company that moves money in the United States of America. You will probably find the same issues with the same terms on any other banking for financial body. Technically, these aren't being blocked. They're being audited. The payments will…

And the strings from this list have to be matched indiscriminately against everything? Names of account holders, text in the reference field of a transaction (if such a thing exists in the US), whatever?

Yes, all text in a message scanned, matches made are for manual review. In the world of financial compliance false positives are in the majority. No company can afford to skip a true match for the sake of scalability based on current audit practices.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#159

Post by bryanrasmussen »

URSpider94 wrote: post #156
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

evidently not given the downvotes, but then I don't understand, if their terms of service say we pay out unless the payment would be of type X and then they keep from paying out on payments of type Y they have violated their terms of service and thus would be open to being sued.

PayPal can pretty much always refuse to process any given transaction. They are not keeping anyone’s money, they are just refusing to accept a transaction request. There’s no money to “pay out.”

Of course, that makes sense, reading the parent comment I thought it implied that they were letting some money in and not letting it back out. In fact I could swear I've read about PayPal doing that - letting money in, not letting it out.

Re: PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”

#160

Post by MattGaiser »

_Microft wrote: post #144
imnotjames wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal gets a list of banned strings from the Office of Foreign Asset controls. If any match those strings it's flagged for a review. This is more or less legally required for any company that moves money in the United States of America. You will probably find the same issues with the same terms on any other banking for financial body. Technically, these aren't being blocked. They're being audited. The payments will…

And the strings from this list have to be matched indiscriminately against everything? Names of account holders, text in the reference field of a transaction (if such a thing exists in the US), whatever?

In finance, compliance is taken very seriously. Better to block 1000 transactions than miss 1.
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