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

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

#101

Post by xanipher » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 3:55 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #70

febin wrote: 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?

Are there no other options? I get that it's difficult if you want international payments, but surely for inter-American payments enough other options are available? (Genuinely curious)

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

#102

Post by mrep » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

Tehnix wrote: post #74

qeternity wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 re…

MasterCard and Visa are though. If you note elsewhere in the thread, it’s basically on their request that a lot of people have been banned.

MasterCard and Visa, 2 seperate companies in the same space are "monopolies"? You literally just proved yourself wrong.

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

#103

Post by aiven » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

benmarks wrote: post #71

Wow, the "bitcoin" responses to that thread. Talk about trading one problem for another....

Yeah, everyone suggest to move from platform with 0.001% incidents rate, to the scammy bitcoin where no one is responsible for anything.

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

#104

Post by tlogan » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

As far as I know, The Hacker News is just bunch of copied articles (i.e., blog spam) - but copying and plagiarism is so prevalent and pervasive on these news sites. Nothing new here.

However, they did add "donate" pay button on their website which means that PayPal might be on the hook if somebody donates to The Hacker News but article is written by somebody else. Just speculating.

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

#105

Post by arisAlexis » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 4:00 PM UTC

ddtaylor wrote: post #47

febin wrote: 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 any third party What other options are there that exist where a regular person could still make a payment?

you are kind of asking for it... :) Bitcoin

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

#106

Post by weberc2 » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 4:02 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #50

febin wrote: 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…

Why does it bottom out in these credit card companies? Is it just prohibitively hard to set up a competitor because you need some critical mass of banks to sign on? Or because people want to pay with credit card and cc companies will prohibit transactions to a fledgling competitor?

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

#107

Post by VMG » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #104

As far as I know, The Hacker News is just bunch of copied articles (i.e., blog spam) - but copying and plagiarism is so prevalent and pervasive on these news sites. Nothing new here. However, they did add "donate" pay button on their website which means that PayPal might be on the hook if somebody donates to The Hacker News but article is written by somebody else. Just speculating.

Even assuming you are 100% correct, it is interesting that this violation is not decided by the legal system but by a secret court inside PayPal. They will not even tell you the offense you are guilty of.

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

#108

Post by jorams » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #38

febin wrote: 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.

Paypal is practically the only commonly accepted online payment method that doesn't require me to have a credit card. The reason people use Paypal today is that they offer a service without much competition to people who want to pay, so if you want to get paid you're leaving money on the table if you don't accept Paypal.

This does of course depend on where your customer base is. Credit cards are universal in the US, not so much internationally.

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

#109

Post by bougiefever » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 4:11 PM UTC

Every chance I get, I tell people not to use PayPal. They have done this repeatedly, and the people who are affected have absolutely no recourse unless they happen to own a popular newspaper. PayPal has been shamed into doing the right thing, and that seems to be the only recourse. From reports I've heard, their internal system doesn't exist, and they aren't a bank, so there is no legal recourse either.

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

#110

Post by eximius » Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

All this talk of monopoly in this sector of finance makes me wonder how you'd start a service in this space.

And it made me realize I have no idea how it works.

I swipe (or insert w/ chip) at a POS... which then beamz the transaction to VISA? So do you need to get a partnership with all of the POS vendors? Is that open or closed?

Of course, that presupposes that someone has your card. VISA doesn't make cards, they just get banks to issue cards using their network (why don't banks do this on their own?). So now I also need a partnership with at least one large bank to have a decent enough exposure to get those partnerships with those POS vendors?

The challenges sound largely political, in making those initial connections with the right company. Which doesn't make them easy, but it elevates a deceptively simple technical problem to a hard one, I think.