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

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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask where you work? And also, why bitcoin? It's a slow cryptocurrency right?! Do you make users to wait for confirmation(about 30-40 mins)? You could experiment with fast Altcoins and convert to Bitcoin eventually.

I'd prefer not to attract any attention from my postings to my employer, but it's a small shop, nothing noteworthy. > why bitcoin? It's a slow cryptocurrency right?! Do you make users to wait for confirmation(about 30-40 mins)? Those decisions are outside of my responsibilities, but we use bitpay to accept bitcoin payments so it all works in real time. I suppose bitcoin was selected because it's the most popular coin…

Bitpay uses Bitcoin Cash

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

#222
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot more to it than that, there is merchant acquiring (merchant relationship with a payment services provider that gives merchants the credentials and equipment to accept payments), there are sometimes aggregators that transactions then funnel into. Next the transactions hit a network which acts as the router between acquirers and issuers (more on this later). The network can also act as a default stand in…

Is there some good resource on how this all works in reality, or is it just something you learn by working in the sector?

I write about it on my company blog for internal developers, perhaps I can get our legal folks to go over it and I can publish some of it. There is a lot of tribal knowledge for sure but on my journey from issuers to merchants to networks, I keep finding consistent themes. Perhaps it is time to put this all down on paper.

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

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "Facebook" is not nearly as generic as "hackernews".

Really? It's literally a generic term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book

Yeah, when I was a college freshman in the 1970s, I got a printed directory of my classmates' names and photos which was informally called the "Face Book". By that time, it was already an old tradition.

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

#225
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot more to it than that, there is merchant acquiring (merchant relationship with a payment services provider that gives merchants the credentials and equipment to accept payments), there are sometimes aggregators that transactions then funnel into. Next the transactions hit a network which acts as the router between acquirers and issuers (more on this later). The network can also act as a default stand in…

Is there some good resource on how this all works in reality, or is it just something you learn by working in the sector?

You can start here and follow some links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_gateway#Typical_transa...

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

#226
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> where no one is responsible for anything. Where everybody is responsible for themselves* I'm sorry for you that you still need a babysitting government to protect you from those horrible scammers.

Crossing into personal attack will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

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

#227
post #5
post #3

Please note that "The Hacker News" is a separate site unrelated to "Hacker News".

This name confusion seems intentional and makes me default to unsympathetic, even though I suspect PayPal’s issue is not related to a name confusion root cause.

It probably is.

A few months ago I was making a news ticker with headlines sourced from hnrss. I had used 'security' as a keyword and posts with score above 100.

I was looking for other sources that provide security news and stumbled upon this one too. What I saw was all posts looked quite similar to the rss filter from hnrss, except all articles were re-written in a slightly different way.

It was all just redundant news from the hnrss feed and other popular security bloggers.

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

#228
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re arguing that companies should only be able to decline service after a court allows them to?

I think he's saying that near-monopolies should have to follow special rules because the market system breaks down

As popular as PayPal may be, it's a far cry from being a monopoly.

That said, I do think holding money should be cause for more stringent regulations. Stopping service is one thing; holding funds entirely should absolutely happen only under direct court order (anything else would be theft).

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

#229
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This name confusion seems intentional and makes me default to unsympathetic, even though I suspect PayPal’s issue is not related to a name confusion root cause.

Even though the website seems to have a history of plagiarism I don't think they named the website after HN. By going through their about us section it looks like they started the website in 2010 as a cybersecurity and hacking news platform. The Hacker News is kind of a no-brainer name for this kind of website. Also THN seems to be an Indian website. I think HN was not at all popular outside the Silicon Valley in 201…

Yeah, even now HN isn't a well known website in jhalwa

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

#230
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're changing the goalposts. This thread is about: 1. (arguably monopolistic) payment processors upon which people's livelihood depends, not restaurants or other noncritical services of which there are many to choose, and 2. It's about discrimination for political motivations, not being abusive to your employees. There's a hardly a line between religious and political convictions, and if you don't find discriminati…

You are the one who is moving the goalposts. From your original comment: > The current trend of cutting services for political reasons is problematic at best, particularly when there's arguably a monopoly. Your statement asserts this is a problem ( "at best" ) when a business cuts off service for political reasons, especially if "there's arguably a monopoly". Presumably, from your wording, you are also unhappy when a…

> Presumably, from your wording, you are also unhappy when a non-monopoly business cuts off service (which, technically, PayPal is, unless it faces antitrust action that I'm not aware of).

That's disingenuous. A finding of monopoly status might be legally definitive, but it's not necessary to reasonably conclude that a corporation is a monopoly.

Online payment alternatives certainly exist, in a similar sense that alternatives to MS Windows existed in the 90s. The recent Patreon/SubscribeStar event suggests strongly that there is collusion at the very least, if the source of the suppression was not PayPal itself. That doesn't change the fundamental point being made.

You are correct that I'm unhappy with discrimination based on political beliefs even when non monopolistic corporations are involved, but pragmatically, that's a much longer discussion. Tackling the immediate concern of people of people having their livelihood destroyed for expressing unpopular views would be sufficient as a stop gap.

> Try imagining the tangled framework needed to protect political belief in a way that wouldn't infringe on freedom of expression if you want to understand why political belief has not yet enjoyed such protection.

More than likely it's not a matter of difficulty, it has simply not been needed. The centralisation of power inherent to technology has been changing the landscape considerably.

Regardless, recent studies have clearly shown that conservative and liberal brains are structurally different, so to some extent, political discrimination is discrimination on physiology. I agree that it's a subtle issue as to what should and should not be considered a deeply held conviction, but it's becoming increasingly clear that it is needed.

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