Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

mashable.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 243 posts

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#211

Post by some_furry »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #174
olefoo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your ideological sophistication is questionable. If you've ever spent time in left discourse you'd know that leftists argue about everything. And it's not just leftists who hate fascists. It's pretty much anybody with a basic understanding of the history of the last century. Fascism wants to start up the murder machine; and they'll tell you that it's to "purify" the nation and they'll try to present it in such a way…

The problem with modern Antifa is that the definition of "fascist" is becoming so loose and so unhinged from historical context that it is meaningless. For example, according to many activists claiming to be associated with Antifa, if one believes that trans-rights matters are not a major priority – compared, say, to class issues – that makes one a fascist. Think of the extreme leftists of May 1968, who were fighting…

> The problem with modern Antifa is that the definition of "fascist" is becoming so loose and so unhinged from historical context that it is meaningless.

I don't buy this narrative. Most of the anti-fascist activists I know adhere to the definition in Ur-Fascism: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#212

Post by breakfastduck »

PeterisP wrote: post #170
breakfastduck wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question here - what's the difference between them selling this 'currency' and buying in game currency on a video game? Or would those kind of things also have to comply with these kind of regulations?

If a video game in-game currency is "input only", as in, the value goes from the players to the company and stays there, it's effectively just a payment for a service. If you allow transfers between users and cashing out to real money (as Epik's "Masterbucks"), then you'd have to comply with these kinds of regulations, so video games try and take steps to ensure that their currencies aren't treated like that, or at l…

Ahh okay I see I missed the point about being able to cash it back out. That makes sense, thank you.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#213

Post by cambalache »

MattGaiser wrote: post #121
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The history of explosive growth in tech platforms should make us very cautious about assuming small economies will stay small. It's been barely a decade since Facebook and Twitter were small platforms that didn't matter.

Facebook and Twitter don't require buying into any particular politics to join.

But as things are going you need to have a very limited ideologically worldview to not get expelled. And I am not taking about silly things like _Hitler was nice_. Do you want recent examples?

If you mention the following (you dont even have to support it or believe it) and many people complain there is a big chance you will be banned because of hate-speech:

1. There may be genetic differences in cognitive abilities between the sexes

2. Intelligence is highly dependent on genetics which may be expressed differently depending on the population clusters. i.e. East Asian people vs Sub-Saharan groups.

3. The killed of unarmed, black males by the police is statistically insignificant in the US and it is dwarfed by other more important issues.

4. What China is doing with the Uighurs and what France is planning to do with their Muslim population is something very similar in spirit and can show the inability to host a significant muslim minority in your country without being exposed to separatism movements based on religion.

5. It is ok to say "only women" menstruate

And on and on and on. The list is growing every day.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#214

Post by ashtonkem »

parliament32 wrote: post #199
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal is undeniably a money transmitter, a type of money service business that is required to required to register as such and perform certain minimum levels of compliance work. If Masterbucks is "like PayPal" from that perspective, subject to certain de minimis thresholds, then they too are likely to require registration. Frankly, if this is the case, and the Epik people are complaining that PayPal's due-diligence…

It's fair, but is it PayPal's job to enforce that? If I sell MasterCard pre-paid cards at my corner store, will Visa come audit me and ask what sort of people I'm selling those cards to?

It is emphatically PayPal’s job to enforce it. That is the way that AML laws are written.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#215

Post by [deleted] »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #205
parliament32 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fair, but is it PayPal's job to enforce that? If I sell MasterCard pre-paid cards at my corner store, will Visa come audit me and ask what sort of people I'm selling those cards to?

From my point of view, PayPal has a reasonable case to want to understand that its business partners are legally compliant if acting as a money service business. Your example is not really the same. If you started using your merchant terminal to take payments on your own off-brand money transfer service, you can be pretty sure that you're going to get cut off just as soon as your processor finds out.

[deleted]

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#216

Post by gwright »

ashtonkem wrote: post #200
gwright wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is room to talk about what is an appropriate due process and/or orderly shutdown process for someone operating internet infrastructure such as a payment processor, ISP, registrar, etc. Perhaps the registrar should have been taken over by some sort of court-appointed receivership, for example? The difficulty here is that there has been no judicial process, just PayPal making a corporate decision based on…

It was Epik’s responsibility to do an “orderly process” when they started acting as a money transmitter, it’s not PayPal’s job to compensate for Epik’s failure to comply with the law. The consequence for failing to comply with legal requirements are often sudden and disrupting; Epik really should have planned for this. Continuing to service Epik despite a failure to follow AML laws actually exposes PayPal to risk, wh…

You are just arguing that Paypal did what was necessary given the current law/SEC regulations, which I didn't disagree with.

I was trying to lift the scope of the discussion to a larger arena in which the role of the SEC certainly could be discussed, for example. Basically asking the question "Is there a better way to manage compliance?"

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#218

Post by gruez »

rndgermandude wrote: post #207
gruez wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I do think that common infrastructure companies (analog to the utilities companies, just essential digital services) such as cloudflare, dns registrars, hosting and cloud providers shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against people with the "wrong" opinions. I don't think that's a good analog. In your area there's only one electric/water/gas company, and 2-3 wired telecoms (eg. phone, cable, maybe fiber). You don't…

It doesn't matter if there are dozens of CDNs. Look at what happened to dailystormer, they were unable to find a CDN. Yes, they are bad nazis and are pretty much underserving of anybody's pity, but it still shows how easily those few market players (and an angry twitter mob) can banish stuff from the internet, driven by some public outrage. There is a handful of CC companies and payment processors. Look at what happe…

>It doesn't matter if there are dozens of CDNs. Look at what happened to dailystormer, they were unable to find a CDN. Yes, they are bad nazis and are pretty much underserving of anybody's pity, but it still shows how easily those few market players (and an angry twitter mob) can banish stuff from the internet, driven by some public outrage.

My claim isn't that they didn't face any censorship, but that the scenario is not analogous to utilities, like you proposed earlier. Furthermore, if we're talking about dozens of market players, how is this any different than ye olden days where there's only a few dozen print shops within 1 day horse ride, and all of them refusing to print your pamphlets? It seems like your position is "no businesses shouldn't be able to discriminate on ideology", not just "common infrastructure companies [...] shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against people with the 'wrong' opinions"

>There is a handful of CC companies and payment processors. Look at what happened to adult performers and sex workers (even the ones operating completely within the law): they cannot even get a bank account once they are found out to be in those businesses.

Many payment processors don't want to deal with adult/sex content not because they're puritans, but because it's associated with high rates of fraud. I don't see anything wrong with dropping clients that turn out to be more trouble than they're worth. Furthermore, the problem you describe doesn't really exist. There are processors dedicated to processing adult content however, as evidenced by sites like onlyfans.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#219

Post by colejohnson66 »

djsumdog wrote: post #133
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #13

From the article: > According to one letter, penned by Epik’s SVP of strategy and communications, Robert Davis, PayPal inquired about offshore accounts, money transmission licenses, and "other queries related to cross‐border activities and law enforcement." > “[The questions] were absolutely absurd, and well outside of any knowledge or experience we have as a domain registrar,” said Davis. These sound to me like thin…

It's kinda shitty if Epik knows they are participating in questionable business practices, can't answer basic questions needed for SEC, and then turn around and try to spit this out as the whole thing being political. This hurts people who want to run independent alternative platforms in the long term.

They don’t care. Today’s political climate (in the US) encourages divisiveness, so if anything can be spun as a left vs. right issue, it will. Especially if it’s a far-left or far-right organization.

Re: PayPal terminates account of Epik, home to Proud Boys domain and Gab

#220

Post by colejohnson66 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #138
tobylane wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without Visa, Mastercard or Paypal on the other side how can it survive? Cryptocurrencies as the current niche are hanging on, I suspect for as long as VMP permit them (ie buying bitcoin with a credit card). Everyone else, even Apple, go through them.

It's really more of a bootstrapping issue than anything. You need to accept credit cards because that's what your customers expect to pay using. If your customers start to expect to pay using some cryptocurrency, what do you need credit cards for? First you have to reach a critical mass for the alternative payment system, but the more legitimate businesses that PayPal boots to the other side of the wall, the more mas…

Genuinely curious: if it’s a growth thing, how did PayPal get where they are today? I know eBay was involved, but not much more than that.
Post reply on HN