[HN Gopher] I fought the PayPal and I won
___________________________________________________________________
I fought the PayPal and I won
Author : exolymph
Score : 812 points
Date : 2022-11-04 05:45 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jessesingal.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jessesingal.substack.com)
| Maursault wrote:
| > While PayPal is technically a private company that can work
| with basically whoever it wants for whatever reason, its
| centralized role as an online payment processor makes this a
| weirdly potent free speech fight.
|
| > He did share correspondence with me where prominent free speech
| attorneys told him, in an apparent contradiction to my claims,
| that he had no viable legal recourse to getting his account
| reinstated.
|
| Though somehow money is speech, the author never supports his
| claim how PayPal, which is not a government actor, can violate
| free speech. The First Amendment does not prohibit private
| individuals, companies and employers from restricting speech.
| b800h wrote:
| Oh not this old canard again.
|
| _The US constitutional guarantee of freedom from government
| interference in speech is just one aspect of the matter_. If
| private companies own every method of articulating your views,
| and are preventing you from doing so, then you aren 't free to
| speak.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Yes but in this case they're specifically referring to free
| speech in a legal context.
| b800h wrote:
| They're referring to contract law, though. Free speech
| isn't the legal bit here.
| eesmith wrote:
| > If private companies own every method of articulating your
| views,
|
| They aren't. We're nowhere even close. To the point where I
| can't even envision how that could happen.
|
| Perhaps in some sort of fantasy libertarian future where
| everything has been privatized, including the streets and
| sidewalks. But that's certainly not anything like now.
| michaelt wrote:
| If you want to envisage such a future for a dystopian novel
| or something like that, just imagine this wild fantasy:
|
| 1. Imagine a world where all the major online spaces -
| twitter, reddit, facebook, tumblr, HN, tiktok, instagram,
| youtube, twitch, slack, and discord and so on are privately
| owned. As are skype, zoom and google meet. Imagine a world
| where you can't even send e-mails if private companies
| don't like your 'sender reputation'.
|
| 2. Then imagine a world where all Radio and TV channels,
| newspapers and billboards are owned by private
| corporations. Maybe they're even owned by a tiny number of
| corporations, with specific political leanings.
|
| 3. Then fantasise that universities and similar venues for
| public speaking are a law unto themselves, and are within
| their rights to choose who they invite to speak.
|
| 4. Imagine a world of rising land values and increasing
| urbanisation, where only the absolute richest people could
| hold an event of any scale on land they own themselves.
|
| 5. Then imagine a world where public squares and parks in
| cities increasingly in private ownership. Perhaps city hall
| is sold to an investment firm who lease it back to the
| city. As it's private land, private security can move
| anyone on for 'unacceptable behaviour'.
|
| 6. There's still a risk some free speech would happen on
| public roads - we probably can't transfer those to private
| companies. We'll have to use the state's power here and
| arrest them - but don't worry, it's not a free speech
| issue. They were, uh, obstructing ambulance traffic. Or we
| could just make it legal for motorists to drive into people
| and let nature take it's course.
|
| Thank goodness such an absurd fiction could never happen in
| real life :)
| gadders wrote:
| And let's not forget that the government are influencing
| which items get suppressed by the social media companies:
| https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-
| disinformat...
| eesmith wrote:
| This list doesn't come close to being a place where
| "private companies own every method of articulating your
| views".
|
| I believe you want to force a large company to accept an
| advertisement on any topic whatsoever, at a "reasonable
| price", and that that there should be no First Amendment
| right of free association which allows them to deny that
| advertisement.
|
| If not, do you want to force them to post that same
| information at no cost?
| michaelt wrote:
| Yes, you'd still be entirely free to articulate your
| views in the privacy of your own bathroom, so I suppose
| it's technically true private companies don't control
| _every_ way of articulating your views.
| eesmith wrote:
| I wasn't being that pedantic.
|
| Your list didn't include federated systems like Mastadon
| or IRC. It didn't include open source systems like Zulip
| that you can host yourself.
|
| I don't use one of the big email providers, so I do get
| bounces when an organization thinks my ISP is untrusted.
| But that's not "can't even send e-mails if private
| companies don't like your 'sender reputation'" only
| "can't send e-mails _to some people_ ". And those people
| decided to use that system in part because they _want_
| the email provider to filter out some of their email.
|
| We are not in a world where "all Radio and TV channels,
| newspapers and billboards are owned by private
| corporations." Member-supported radio and TV, and college
| radio, are still things, as is community/public-access
| cable.
|
| Further, how do you want to change it? Do you want a
| government station which is required to be open access so
| anyone can broadcast anything?
|
| Universities and similar venues for public speaking _have
| always_ had the right to choose who they invite to speak.
| This is what freedom of association means.
|
| Also, they are not a "law unto themselves". There are
| limits on the types of speech they can prohibit - a
| public university is restricted by civil rights laws, as
| is a private/non-publicly funded school which allows
| public rental of a space.
|
| How do you want to change it? Do you want them colleges
| to be forced to accept any speaker on any topic,
| whatsoever?
|
| We see events like the Gathering of the Juggalos, with
| 20,000 people, and wonder what you mean by 'only the
| absolute richest people could hold an event of any scale
| on land they own themselves.'
|
| And I already commented on your "As it's private land" in
| my "fantasy libertarian future where everything has been
| privatized" - as something we aren't close to doing.
|
| Yes, I totally agree that privatization of public spaces
| is something I don't like, though I'll point out the
| oddity of how the privately-owned public space at
| Zuccotti Park was a better site for the Occupy Wall
| Street protest than a public park, because the latter had
| curfews.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> And I already commented on your "As it's private
| land" in my "fantasy libertarian future where everything
| has been privatized"_
|
| Ah, that's actually a real example, from London
| https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-
| pseu...:
|
| _" Outside City Hall on the south bank of the Thames,
| home to London's democratically elected mayor and
| assembly, private security guards working for the More
| London estate (ultimately owned by the sovereign wealth
| fund of Kuwait) prevented the Guardian from carrying out
| any interviews.
|
| Security officers intervened within moments of a reporter
| attempting to ask questions of members of the public, and
| immediately escorted him to the security office where it
| was explained that unsanctioned journalistic activity is
| banned on the site._
|
| So the example of a city hall leased from an investment
| fund with private security moving people on for
| unacceptable behaviour is, unfortunately, not merely
| fantasy.
|
| _> Further, how do you want to change it?_
|
| Who says I want to change it? My beliefs don't include
| defending to the death other people's right to glorify
| the holocaust.
|
| I recently lived through a pandemic where offline means
| of communication and assembly were severely curtailed -
| and everything from education to concerts to job
| interviews to doctor's appointments to courts to funerals
| to national legislatures ended up reliant on
| multinational tech companies' servers.
|
| It seems to me, in other words, that almost all
| communication _was_ in the hands of private companies.
|
| If someone says they support free speech except when
| private companies are involved, IMHO they might as well
| say they support free speech except on days ending in Y.
| eesmith wrote:
| Are we anywhere near close to selling out city halls in
| the way you describe, in such a way that "private
| companies own every method of articulating your views" is
| meaningful?
|
| I specifically called out POPS as something I don't like.
|
| FWIW, the HQ for the Greater London Authority has since
| moved, to a building owned by the Greater London
| Authority -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Hall,_London_(Newham)
| . (Confusingly, as I just learned, it's not a city hall,
| in that it does not serve a city.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privately_owned_public_spac
| e says "the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan promised to
| publish new guidelines on how these spaces are governed."
| - any progress?
|
| > If someone says they support free speech except when
| private companies are involved, IMHO they might as well
| say they support free speech except on days ending in Y.
|
| IMHO, those who support free speech without also
| supporting the right of free association ... are not
| actually supporting free speech. Hecklers do not have a
| veto right.
|
| I would change it by having and enforcing significantly
| stronger anti-trust laws, restoring restrictions on media
| conglomeration, stronger personal privacy rights,
| including strict limitations on resale of personal
| information, and restoring postal banking for anyone to
| use. For starters.
|
| Yet the result will still have all major online spaces be
| privately owned and nearly all Radio and TV channels,
| newspapers and billboards owned by private corporations.
|
| Do you think it would still be so dystopian?
|
| Could you elaborate more on real-world examples of your
| points #3 and #4?
|
| Regarding #3 has many cases where a college has changed
| its mind on inviting a speaker, but every case I've read
| seems to be a valid exercise of a right of free
| association.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >They aren't. We're nowhere even close.
|
| They are and have been for decades. One of the reasons of
| passing laws preventing businesses from engaging in certain
| forms of discrimination is because because businesses had
| enough power that to discriminate based on a protected
| factor could lock someone out from society. This is
| extremely noticeable in smaller communities where there
| might be only a single grocery store, but even in larger
| communities you'll find companies often working together
| and that they share common suppliers of certain goods or
| services who can lock you out of the majority of companies
| all at once.
|
| Up until now we have tolerated it because the forms of
| discrimination we wouldn't tolerate have since been
| individually banned and there haven't been enough cases of
| coordinated denial of social involvement to prompt further
| legal action, but the power is there. I assume the threat
| of legal action further limiting the power of companies to
| discriminate has prevented the threat from going too far,
| and why companies will even walk back cases when enough
| popular support gets behind it.
| eesmith wrote:
| I don't see the connection between "private companies own
| every method of articulating your views" and the civil
| rights movement.
|
| What you describe seems more true of the labor movement,
| and especially company towns.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| > They aren't. We're nowhere even close. To the point where
| I can't even envision how that could happen.
|
| We are pretty close - Mastercard and Visa's (non-public)
| BRAM rules are pretty clumsy and arbitrary, and effectively
| do have a tremendous impact on global speech as they are
| effectively a duopoly. Their terms apply to essentially
| every business that requires any revenue, and therefore any
| platforms that people might want to speak on.
|
| That is a problem. A terrible one. And they abuse it.
| eesmith wrote:
| Yes, I well remember when the US pressured many big
| financial companies to stop financial transactions with
| WikiLeaks, and cut off something like 95% of their
| funding. (Bank of America also didn't like WikiLeaks'
| planned release of the bank's internal documents.)
|
| I'll note that WikiLeaks is still around, and I believe
| they could always receive wire transfers. (As a less
| relevant point, WikiLeaks uses the money for ongoing
| acquisition and curation, and not only dissemination. The
| information was mirrored and available elsewhere.)
|
| This therefore isn't an example of b800h's "private
| companies own every method of articulating your views."
|
| Which other examples were you thinking of?
| lightedman wrote:
| "The First Amendment does not prohibit private individuals,
| companies and employers from restricting speech. "
|
| Constitutional rights are also civil rights, which are things
| companies may not violate.
| simiones wrote:
| In the case of freedom of speech, the First Ammendment
| doesn't establish a right for citizens, it establishes a
| prohibition to Congress:
|
| "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of
| speech, or of the press"
|
| I really don't see how this can be taken to mean that a
| private company can't establish a rule abridging the freedom
| of speech.
|
| Note that there is another part where I would agree that it
| establishes a positive right:
|
| "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging [...] the right
| of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
| Government for a redress of grievances"
|
| The language here does seem to assume that there exists a
| right peaceably to assemble, so you could argue that private
| companies also have to respect this right, even if the
| amendment only explicitly calls out Congress for this as
| well.
| copenseethe wrote:
| gadders wrote:
| Another scorching hot take. By this logic, Rosa Parks should
| have started her own bus company.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Free speech is a value, not merely a legal concept.
| danuker wrote:
| Money is freely convertible to speech.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo
| from wrote:
| How many times does this utterly pointless discussion on the
| legality of platform censorship need to be had? No one is
| saying that what PayPal or any other big company is doing in
| terms of censorship is illegal, it's usually just either that
| 1) they think it should be or 2) they feel it's vaguely
| unamerican. Comment threads of this nature should be
| preeemptively removed by dang because they go absolutely
| nowhere.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Yeah, it's not a free speech issue.
|
| It _is_ , however, a consumer rights issue. It's obviously the
| case that some larger tech companies -- PayPal, Google, Amazon,
| Meta, etc -- can have a large impact on one's life if they
| decide to suspend or ban your account, but legal remedies
| are...limited. As happened here, often they don't even tell you
| why, and greatly limit or block your ability to appeal. This is
| a problem, not a free speech problem, but a consumer rights
| problem.
| rocqua wrote:
| The first amendment is not the end-all and be-all of 'free
| speech'.
|
| Heck, the literal phrasing is "Congress shall not abridging the
| freedom of speech". The fact that congress is mentioned means
| that others can also abridge the freedom of speech.
|
| Note that 'abridge' means diminish in scope. If your boss says
| "If you say ducks are nice, you will be fired" that affects
| your freedom of speech. It isn't a first-amendment issue unless
| your boss is the government. But it remains someone inhibiting
| your speech.
| [deleted]
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Note also that government employees are subject to greater
| control of their speech than ordinary citizens.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Unless it's religious speech, which IMO, should cover all
| political speech because of anti-discrimination laws.
| baidifnaoxi wrote:
| ITT: people that think PayPal was acting alone as a "private"
| company.
|
| I'm under the firm belief that this is just our federal
| government pushing a censorship and "misinformation" policy that
| is unconstitutional, but using pressure on private companies to
| accomplish said policies.
|
| Twitter docs leaked: https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-
| media-disinformat...
|
| PayPal: https://www.techdirt.com/2010/12/07/visa-mastercard-kkk-
| is-a... (yes source is questionable , but actual events did occur
| anderspitman wrote:
| Computers have gotten so complicated, exploitable, and finicky
| that sometimes I feel only some programmers are able to fully
| enjoy the benefits of them. Likewise our legal system has gotten
| so complex, exploitable, and finicky that only lawyers can
| navigate disputes with other entities. I wonder which is a more
| valuable skill.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| Logging into PayPal is now more annoying than logging into my
| German online banking. Which is telling as that is already a
| major pain.
|
| Every time I have to solve 2 captchas and fill the log in form
| twice until I log in.
|
| I've switched to using my online banking to pay for stuff over
| clicking the PayPal button.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Same! The number of times they claim I'm logging in from a new,
| unknown device has gone up significantly, even though I'm using
| the same browser on the same device all the time, and I don't
| clear cookies between sessions. The most egregious thing to me
| is that after solving the captcha, you are thrown back to the
| login form claiming that the password you entered is incorrect
| - which is impossible, as I just pasted it from my password
| manager. I'm happy about every web shop adding GiroPay as an
| alternative payment method in Germany.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Giropay is great!
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| This is great! I just sent out a Notice of Dispute to eBay. I
| think I'll send one to Shopify next!
|
| Correction: Shopify does not have an arbitration clause. Instead
| they specify the court of jurisdiction. Looks like it's Ontario
| court system for me.
| bluenotebo0k wrote:
| "I suspected it had something to do with my involvement in a
| certain group named after a certain slavery abolitionist."
|
| What's the group? I clicked on the link and it points to a
| podcast that's over 1.5 hours long.
| TheFreim wrote:
| The only one I could think of would be the John Brown Gun Club.
| One of their members committed a terrorist attack on an ICE
| facility back in 2019 so perhaps that's why PayPal flagged the
| post author.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound_John_Brown_Gun_C...
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I have been locked out of my account by the stupid 2FA made
| mandatory. I have previously entered my phone number for contact
| purposes, forgot about it, and once I returned in some years they
| won't let me sign-in without a code sent to that number (which
| isn't mine anymore). Apparently I'm not alone caught in this.
| Luckily I only had about $20 there and don't really need PayPal
| nowadays.
| Bellamy wrote:
| I quit PayPal as I heard they can take 2500$ from your account
| for "misinformation".
|
| https://bgr.com/business/new-paypal-rule-the-company-can-tak...
| gadders wrote:
| In the UK, paypal recently generated a lot of adverse publicity
| for banning the Free Speech Union [0] for, er, free speech [1].
|
| This has now generated such controversy that MPs are proposing
| amendments in parliament preventing Paypal from blocking accounts
| on political grounds.
|
| [0] https://freespeechunion.org/about/
|
| [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/27/paypal-
| reins...
| Mindwipe wrote:
| As always, not actually doing something useful like banning
| payment discrimination, just passing laws to protect speech
| they like and not speech they don't like.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| _> the contract you "agreed" to means you are legally not allowed
| to take them to a real court. Your only recourse is arbitration._
|
| americans can sign away their rights to sue at their own courts?
| That seems wrong.
|
| For me, as a german, the paypal contract reads that i can
| escalate a conflict to the EU consumer protection agency or the
| french regulatory authority for financial institutions (which
| signs their banking license). It further reads that the governing
| body of law and court of of justice should be in Wales, but that
| this does not limit my consumer right to sue at my local court.
| No arbitration clause, especially no mandatory arbitration with
| an agency of the corporations choice.
|
| I do understand the idea that private arbitration may be cheaper
| than court proceedings, but is mandatory arbitration even legally
| enforceable, or is that just scary text a court would overrule?
| pie_flavor wrote:
| There is always a clause saying you can opt out of the
| arbitration stranglehold in writing, it'd be unenforceable if
| there wasn't. It's just that nobody gives enough of a damn to
| utilize it, and it's time-gated, so by the time you actually
| run into a dispute, you're already stuck.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| The US Paypal terms also allow you to take the case to small
| claims.
|
| Mandatory arbitration can be enforceable if certain
| requirements are met. The big difference between the EU and US
| is the American rule, each side bears their own costs. Lawyers
| might be $300 an hour, so arbitration can be a lot less
| expensive for everyone
| indymike wrote:
| > americans can sign away their rights to sue at their own
| courts? That seems wrong.
|
| You still have immediate access to the courts if you are
| challenging the legality of the contract (i.e. something is
| actually against the law in the contract or you are claiming
| the contract is so unjust it should be allowed ). If it's just
| a dispute under the terms of the agreement, you usually have to
| do arbitration and then you can go to court. Every time I've
| done arbitration, the outcome has been pretty fair (which to
| me, means I won) and even a better experience that US Courts
| are. US Courts use an adversarial system, so if you don't spend
| a lot of time in courtrooms (which I don't), it's not a
| pleasant place to be even when you win.
| staticman2 wrote:
| The U.S. congress passed a law a while back making arbitration
| terms in contracts legally enforceable.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| I participated in the arbitration swarm against Indie Go Go a few
| years back..
|
| There was a crowdfunding which was successful, they charged all
| of us, told the creator they were sending the money, then after a
| week canceled the crowd funding and refunded our money.
|
| According to their TOS, they were NOT a party to the contract we
| had with the creator and forced arbitration, so we fought it.
| Each participant (200+ iirc) each had to pay $200 while IGG had
| to pay the other $2300/participant (~$460k) to get the
| arbitration initiated. Then they tried to push it to a class
| action (to simplify their legal battle) but according to their
| _own TOS_ a class action was not allowed so that died quickly.
|
| So then we collectively worked through one firm who iterated on
| our filings based on how each one went.
|
| After a year+, IGG finally unlocked the creator's account, issued
| an apology, and updated their TOS. Insiders at IGG _claim_ that
| the legal bill was into the millions.
|
| It's not easy but you _can_ fight bad behavior from these guys.
| ciroduran wrote:
| This article reminds me of the epic patio11's thread:
| https://twitter.com/patio11/status/906384638733467648
|
| "You do _not_ want to be read as someone who is angry and needs
| to be talked down. You want to be read as someone collecting a
| paper trail. "
| themeiguoren wrote:
| Written up as a blog post:
| https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
| blitzar wrote:
| " _One group in the bank is scored on tickets per hour. Another
| 's KPI is "zero regulatory actions this quarter." You only want
| to talk to them._"
| urban_winter wrote:
| It's worth knowing that in the UK PayPal is covered by the
| Financial Ombudsman service. They wouldn't be interested in
| accounts being blocked as in this case but they were very helpful
| to me when PayPal made a payment that I did not authorize and
| then refused to put it right.
|
| I don't use PayPal any more. Their support staff are
| impossibility hopeless so any kind of problem with your account
| will cause you a world of pain.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It's a shame the FOS does not have any powers to address
| banking discrimination due to frankly broken enforcement
| systems though. They really should.
| dazc wrote:
| The Financial Ombudsman Service is one of the few UK
| organizations that is anyway effective. If only all other
| regulatory authorities were half as good?
|
| One problem I have found with some UK eCommerce sites though is
| that their payment gateways are often broken with Brave/Chrome
| and the paypal payment option is an easy way of bypassing this
| issue.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| The FOS seems effective to consumers because it levies a
| PS750 charge to the financial institution for each case it
| investigates. It is often cheaper to do whatever the customer
| wants, whether or not the complaint is justified.
|
| The financial institutions at the receiving end of FOS
| decisions don't necessarily regard it as effective. Claims
| management companies, for instance, can flood banks with very
| many dubious claims, with the FOS as effectively the
| enforcer.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| My state (New York) has a similar regulatory feature. I had
| an issue with bees inside of the utility pole that feeds my
| home. Issue: the pole is owned by the telephone company. So
| power people tell me to call the phone company, and the
| phone company tells me to get a landline before they will
| talk to me.
|
| So I called the public utility commission, which apparently
| starts fining both parties within 48 hours of the
| complaint, which I submitted on Sunday. Monday morning
| arrives, and there is a comical gathering of trucks with
| crews frantically working to replace the pole (which is a
| fascinating process).
|
| The foreman told me that the government is essentially
| level 3 support, and had I worked through the company, he
| probably would have inspected it over a few months before
| any work would have started, and only if I was persistent.
|
| The key lesson is that large companies only perceive pain.
| PayPal lives in a big loophole, so it's difficult to
| inflict pain on them and thus difficult to ever be
| satisfied with them.
| cjg wrote:
| I once put the word "complaint" on the top of a letter to a
| UK bank who had made a mistake on a statement. It made all
| the difference. What had previously been dismissed as
| unimportant was addressed and they sent me PS100
| compensation.
|
| Just taking that first step towards the Financial Ombudsman
| was enough.
| xnorswap wrote:
| It's a bit "one weird trick", but you're right that
| absolutely the best way to get consumer problems addressed
| in the UK is to use the word "complaint". It starts the
| clock as complaints typically have to be addressed within
| certain time limits.
|
| If you don't use the word complaint then companies can
| argue that they thought you were merely providing feedback
| or engaging in something other than a complaint.
|
| As soon as you use the word complaint, they can't argue
| that and it puts you on track to escalate to the ombudsman
| and the companies know it, and they know you know it.
| Gelob wrote:
| Can this be done for a Twitter account that was suspended ?
| Proven wrote:
| ggreer wrote:
| The author of this article is a public defender in the pacific
| northwest. He sometimes writes for Jesse Singal, but he also has
| his own substack.[1] Many of his posts provide a unique window
| into the criminal justice system. If that sounds interesting to
| you, I strongly recommend reading more of his writing. In my
| opinion, his greatest hits are _Eleven Magic Words_ [2] and
| _Death of a Client_ [3].
|
| 1. https://ymeskhout.substack.com/
|
| 2. https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/eleven-magic-words-unlocked
|
| 3. https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/death-of-a-client
| skrebbel wrote:
| I just read "Eleven Magic Words" and I'm entirely baffled.
|
| Also what a writer, wow.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Eh, if he were a great writer, I'd understand the point of
| the story, specifically what was so powerful about the
| eleven-word incantation. Which I don't. I would like my 3
| minutes back, Your Honor.
|
| Apparently I'd have to be an attorney to get it, in which
| case I'd have presumably learned about this obscure legal
| hack in law school.
| oogali wrote:
| You read all of that in 3 minutes?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Altogether, it took more like seven or eight minutes, but
| because it was decently-written and had _some_ legitimate
| educational and entertainment value, I 'll settle for a
| partial refund.
| ymeskhout wrote:
| > I'd understand the point of the story, specifically what
| was so powerful about the eleven-word incantation
|
| That's the point, there was nothing remarkable about the
| eleven words. Goes to show you how arbitrary the system can
| be.
| lupire wrote:
| I don't get it.
|
| The lawyer asked ""Is there anything the court would like to
| review to reconsider?" and the judge said, oh, well "since
| you have asked if I want to, yeah I guess I do, so I'll just
| change my ruling for no reason?"
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| That article was posted by the original author on Reddit
| and one of the commentators came up with a plausible
| explanation (which convinced the author).
|
| In one sentence the idea is that because public defenders
| know that the overwhelming majority of their clients belong
| in jail, and the judge knows that public defenders know
| that too, if a public defender makes an extra plea to the
| judge that's a signal that the public defender knows
| something that means this client _really_ shouldn 't be in
| jail and therefore changes the judge's opinion of the
| client.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/w5jyyd/eleven_ma
| g...
| jimmaswell wrote:
| "I implore you to reconsider"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvu5Ephsqyk
| ymeskhout wrote:
| lmao I never saw this before and it's TOO perfect
| skrebbel wrote:
| Exactly that. I had to read it twice too. The way I read it
| is there were so many hearings so quickly in a row that the
| judge was in some sort of blur. Case, bam, verdict. Case,
| bam, verdict. One every 10 minutes. And in that situation,
| just from being asked to think it over a few more seconds,
| she saw that maybe she had it wrong and changed her mind.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| My reading was that the judge had thirty seconds to
| regard the grieving family and changed her mind and
| asking her to reconsider gave her an easy opportunity to
| change the sentence.
| overthemoon wrote:
| I don't think the author gets it, either. I think that's
| the point. A small miracle happened.
| paulclinger wrote:
| It's possible that the judge already was considering
| changing their ruling (or was "on the fence" about it), but
| the question gave them a way to explain it (rather than
| saying "I changed my mind").
| spbaar wrote:
| yes
| SapporoChris wrote:
| "It's the functional equivalent of an attorney's XP level", I
| laughed embarrassingly loud.
|
| Thank you and grandparent for recommendations.
| kator wrote:
| Yes very well written and reminds us all that in the end
| we're humans, and once in a while things can go right if only
| for us asking why they aren't.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| recuter wrote:
| The dark lord Cthulhu is rather "problematic" as well and yet
| here we are giving you the benefit of the doubt..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft#Race
| opan wrote:
| From your link:
|
| >Singal was supported by sex columnist Dan Savage, who
| derided what he described as a "long & dishonest campaign"
| against Singal,[14] and urged readers to listen to Singal's
| interview of a youth-gender clinician before judging him as
| transphobic.[6]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I'm afraid that everyone using a computer today is relying on
| the John von Neumann architeture. To add, von Neumann is
| problematic and called for premptive nuclear war and the
| genocidal murder of tens of millions of human beings. I
| suggest throwing that vile machine in the trash immediately -
| you don't want to be using something designed by a wannabe
| mass-murderer, do you?
| Kye wrote:
| There's a way to bring stuff like this up on HN that won't
| result in...well, you see the replies. Yes he _is_ a bigot,
| and I know this from reading his own comments (not from
| hearsay as his defenders like to assume), but even as The
| Choir I find this comment a bit unhelpful. It 's a one-liner
| and a link. Not even with an anchor to the part of the wiki
| that addresses this.
| adrusi wrote:
| Singal isn't a bigot. It's not the service to trans people
| that many people seem to think it is to call anyone who
| documents unflattering dimensions of trans politics a
| bigot. Colin Wright, mentioned in the article, could more
| reasonably be called a bigot, though having his Paypal
| account terminated on that basis wouldn't be just.
|
| But this really shouldn't be about Singal or Wright. I, a
| trans woman, had a fine evening out with the actual author
| of the piece, Yassine Meskhout, back in April along with a
| few other folks, and I'm quite sure he isn't bigoted
| against trans people.
| Kye wrote:
| I think I'll stick with my original opinion based on my
| own experience and reading. You don't get to decide for
| me any more than I get to decide for you.
| [deleted]
| recuter wrote:
| > You don't get to decide for me any more than I get to
| decide for you.
|
| > There's a way to bring stuff like this up on HN
|
| Mhm. Let the dark lord decide for all of us I say. After
| all it is only a matter of proper verbiage how to most
| effectively ostracize someone you've personally deemed
| unlikeable eh?
|
| Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation!
|
| From Eleven Magic Words Unlocked:
|
| > _Recall how plea deals are structured, and how the entire
| purpose of a suspended jail sentence is to dangle the anvil
| over someone's head to "encourage" them to do the things
| they're supposed to do._
|
| I was in a relationship with a police officer for a while, and
| this is what she said about probation: "Fuck that, send me to
| fuckin jail." And she reiterated it a couple of different ways
| to make it perfectly clear she wasn't joking.
|
| A lot of people who haven't experienced it think probation is
| "being let off easy". It's not. You have to show up for check-
| ins, and excuses aren't tolerated. You have to pay for this
| punishment out of your own pocket too. And any other things the
| court applies to you too. And if you fuck up, and fail to show,
| you go to jail. If your car breaks down on the way, you go to
| jail. Your pregnant wife gives birth on the way and you reroute
| to the hospital, you go to jail. It's basically setting you up
| to go to jail, but rather just having the threat of it hanging
| over your head. At least _in jail_ it 's hard to fuck up and
| you're not responsible for anything while there. Probation is
| putting you in charge of your own punishment and making you
| literally pay for it too.
|
| To hear an actual, currently employed police officer say they'd
| prefer jail to probation is a far weightier than it first seems
| statement. A police officer, in jail. With inmates who'll
| probably find out that they're a cop and take out their
| understandable if not justified frustrations on them.
|
| _Would rather go to jail than face probation._
|
| Remember this the next time someone says "they just got
| probation", I'll never forget it. It's a very stressful, and
| _expensive_ anvil they 've got over your head, and it might
| fall on you for things completely out of your control. You're
| not "free", you're not "out", you're sitting under a very real
| sword of Damocles.
| ymeskhout wrote:
| Very true! I've had many clients opt for jail. The benefit of
| jail is that it's at least definite. The pervasive
| uncertainty in probation amplifies the stress factor,
| especially since sanctions can come out of nowhere and wreck
| your life.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Only upon reading your comment did I realise that the Substack
| article I just read was not written by Jesse Singal.
| TheFlyingFish wrote:
| I regularly read Singal-Minded and it still took me until "I
| am a lawyer" before I scrolled back up and checked the author
| name.
| joelrunyon wrote:
| Feels like this would be a perfect add-on use case for
| https://donotpay.com/
| jasmer wrote:
| Retail Fintech desperately needs consumer regulation, hopefully
| with a 'light and enlightened' quality.
| grumple wrote:
| Business take:
|
| Companies that scaled up quickly in earlier days of the internet
| tend to treat their customers like trash.
|
| Today, as they reach the limits of their growth (hard to grow
| when nearly every person on the planet has had an account with
| you or has one with a competitor), they will find that poor
| customer service comes back to bite them. Everyone will remember
| the time PayPal closed their account without warning, or the time
| AirBnB refused to refund them for the rodent feces and other
| unlivable conditions in their rental, or the nonsensical response
| from Google's "support" that ignored everything you sent them.
|
| Populist take:
|
| I would really love for some regulation and standardization of
| service usage agreements. We already know basically nobody
| actually reads them, despite the checkbox or button confirming
| it. Give us a summary with some popular icons or simplified
| lists.
|
| I'd also love for some regulation around forced arbitration
| clauses. It should not be legal to waive your rights to remedy by
| trial any more than it is to waive your right to minimum wage.
| mqus wrote:
| > Companies that scaled up quickly in earlier days of the
| internet tend to treat their customers like trash.
|
| Well, it is just much cheaper to optimize for the 90% Case
| (Everything works just fine, nothing unusual is happening) than
| aiming for covering 100% of cases. Ofc this is more of a
| general business rule imho than just startups(=scaling fast),
| but when you grow fast, you also need to prioritize much more.
|
| But in the more general sense it seems to me, that this is also
| the reason that government spending is quite a bit higher than
| if a company would do the same, because governments should be
| (and mostly are) aiming for 100% and not the most convenient
| subgroup of the population.
| stewx wrote:
| TLDR: PayPal's user agreement says you can't sue them and must
| use arbitration for any disputes. And PayPal will pay all the
| costs of arbitration up to $10k. This guy followed the process
| and they unfroze his account without any explanation of why they
| froze it in the first place.
| [deleted]
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and even PayPal are public
| utilities at this point, and we need better accountability from
| them. If there's one piece of legislation I think the US needs,
| it's to make these monstrous, global, faceless, tech companies
| use a tiny portion of their mind-boggling profits to staff a
| proper help desk that can actually FIX these kinds of problems.
| Make the data public, and if the user-satisfaction rate isn't
| high-enough, stiff (actual!) penalties start being applied until
| it gets there.
|
| I know this won't be popular here, but I stand by it.
| astura wrote:
| This isn't a "tech company" thing - PayPal is no different from
| any bank in this regard. Banks close accounts for seemingly no
| reason (or silly reasons) with no recourse literally all the
| time.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| And yet, your point is completely pointless. I can easily go
| find another bank. By design, they're fungible. PayPal's
| position and "reputation" puts them in a league of their own
| when it comes to accepting online payments. I don't even know
| of something that has the same mindshare. Venmo? Owned by
| PayPal, in yet another CLASSIC American monopolistic
| cannibalization, engineered to explicitly deny my ability to
| USE SOMEONE ELSE. Seriously, I don't know of any others
| besides Apple Pay. Does Ebay work with that? My point is that
| your options are limited, like the power company, water, or
| sewer.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I think a lot of these companies make two mistakes. They allow
| rogue employees to have too much power in banning users, and
| their knee-jerk reaction to an account that gets too many
| "reporters" is to suspend it.
|
| So a bunch of Tumbler users who get mad at someone can report en
| masse a Twitter user, or an Etsy employee who gets his feelings
| hurts can click on a button and get an account blocked. The C
| staff and legal have no idea this is going on.
| mrspencehimself wrote:
| honestly, that was a riveting read
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Thanks, I remembered I was receiving a few dollars a month from
| patreon which added up over the years, I just transfered a big
| chunk of that out of my account.
|
| At this point, I'm not worried about Paypal's security, but more
| about their own policies of shutting down accounts. I wish
| companies were required to specify why an account was blocked,
| but I'm 99% sure they don't and they've weaseled their way out of
| it so that challenging the decision becomes more difficult. If
| they specify a reason to someone who is more ligituous or who
| knows legalese, they could probably pick the reasoning apart.
|
| Or just a "oh you have ruled 'fraudulent activity'? Prove it"
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Arbitration -- by design -- happens behind closed doors in
| boring confidential proceedings. So the only information we get
| comes to us piecemeal, but it indicates consumers and workers win
| between 1% to 6% of the time.
|
| > Notably, neither Square nor Stripe offer to cover arbitration
| costs, and Stripe even requires the loser of the dispute to pay
| the winner's entire legal expenses
|
| I am glad the author got it sorted, but it appears that if this
| was a material dispute with money at stake for PayPal, the game
| is stacked against you so much, you might as well be a medieval
| surf teying to get justice against the Lord that has wronged him.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| We need some modern version of _Ashford v. Thornton_ to abolish
| forced arbitration.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashford_v_Thornton
| vector_spaces wrote:
| twohaibei wrote:
| i would prefer if silicon valley corporations didn't judge my
| morals when deciding to cut me off my money.
| twic wrote:
| > recent hard turn to the far right
|
| !!!
|
| This is not something i've noticed. If anything, over the last
| couple of years, i've noticed a drift from libertarian optimism
| to an awareness of economic injustice.
|
| Can you give me three example of actual _far right_ positions
| being accepted here in the last few months?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Sorry, what does this article have to do with social justice
| issues?
| parker_mountain wrote:
| Aside from the article's snide mention of "sex realism", the
| reason this person was banned from paypal was likely tied to
| their anti-trans "activism".
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Hmm, maybe, but if that was the case, would they get
| reinstated so easily? Getting immediately reinstated makes
| it sound more like it was a mistake, not the result of some
| real internal policy.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Most people complaining about "getting banned by Paypal" are
| from four groups: Nazis, TERFs, scammers and sex workers. Out
| of these three, the only ones worth caring about are sex
| workers. Scammers should be sent off to prison, and Nazis and
| TERFs don't deserve the service of anyone not legally
| mandated to provide them service. Deplatforming works.
|
| The problem is that there is _also_ a fifth group - an
| extremely small number of people like the author who end up
| in the crossfire of some random AI bullshit. And there needs
| to be a way to help out these people as well, without
| providing an avenue especially for scammers to exploit.
| hairybobbins wrote:
| 'TERFs' are just feminists who want to retain female-only
| spaces.
|
| This is not a viewpoint that's even remotely comparable to
| Nazism, whose adherents are a distinct group with a set of
| beliefs that are inherently contradictory to feminism.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The venn diagram intersection between Nazis and TERFs is
| shockingly high. Just look at _who_ is constantly pushing
| anti-Trans narratives - it 's Evangelicals and the wider
| GQP. Only a very negligible part of the tankie Left is
| also pushing that kind of crap.
| [deleted]
| urbandw311er wrote:
| I also did a double take here, but I think the poster is
| referring to the link on the article's page that could be
| seen as supportive of the activities of Colin Wright.
| hvdijk wrote:
| There's no "could be seen as", the phrase "sex realist"
| makes it clear beyond any doubt that the author does
| support the activities of Colin Wright.
| dcminter wrote:
| When I originally opened my PayPal account many years ago, the
| terms and conditions were displayed in a textarea and thus
| completely editable. So I deleted them before I clicked the
| confirm button, and ran off a screenshot of the page.
|
| I always wondered what would have happened if I'd had any kind of
| dispute with them; would this have over-ridden the various "we're
| updating your terms and conditions" emails I received from them
| over the subsequent years? Or would continuing to use my account
| have amounted to acquiescence? (I assume the latter)
|
| In practice I closed my account a couple of years ago when I
| moved to Sweden as it's not possible to transfer the account
| between countries. I hadn't used it much because (Transfer)Wise
| makes international bank transfers so much cheaper than they used
| to be and for everything else I use a debit card (or, within
| Sweden, Swish).
|
| I don't think I'd go long on Paypal shares...
| flaviut wrote:
| > I always wondered what would have happened if I'd had any
| kind of dispute with them
|
| NAL, but a contract requires a "meeting of the minds"[1]. You
| altering the contract without the other party knowing makes it
| invalid.
|
| The process when modifying a contract is generally to have all
| parties initial next to each modification to indicate that
| they've read and agree with the change.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds
| dcminter wrote:
| Right, but that's my point. I deleted the terms (contract).
| So what contract applies? There was clearly no meeting of
| minds on this. So, for example, I would speculate that I
| could not have been bound to arbitration in the event of a
| dispute. Usually the Ts&Cs also contain verbiage about how
| and when amendments to the terms must be accepted, hence I
| wonder if subsequent changes would automatically be binding
| without further notice (over simplified, but you know what I
| mean) in the way that they normally are.
|
| I don't think it's as clear-cut as all that, though in
| practice I wouldn't much want to trust my weight to that
| rather flimsy hypothesis. I'd love to hear a real legal
| opinion on this though, just for shits & giggles.
| flaviut wrote:
| Then there's no valid contract, and you are not legally
| allowed to use the service. You retain the right to go to
| court, where you would find a judge unhappy with you for
| being a smartass.
|
| https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20150717729
|
| This person secretly edited their post employment
| discrimination release agreement. In court, they got out of
| the agreement, but they were forced to pay back the
| consideration + interest.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I haven't been using PayPal since more than 5 years.
|
| For quick transfers I can use Revolut. For buying something I can
| use card. For easy payment integration with Web apps there are
| countless tools.
|
| So I am wondering what use cases PayPal still serves, use cases
| which aren't already better covered by better means. Why pay
| heavy commissions to PayPal?
| lmm wrote:
| Buying things in a foreign country, or where a seller hasn't
| integrated the card type you want to use (particularly a
| problem for small/local websites). Sending money to a friend
| internationally. Avoiding having to give someone your bank
| details or credit card number.
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| From the buyer's perspective: hassle-free unsubscription,
| seeing all my subscriptions in one place, no need to create
| accounts on random seller sites. And yes, I'm willing to pay a
| couple of %% to anyone who can fulfill those needs, not
| necessarily PayPal.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Some companies like BandCamp mandate PayPal.
|
| This is incredibly annoying and unhelpful, but there's no other
| option.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Could this be a startup idea? "Like Bandcamp but with sane
| payouts system."
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| I use a VISA CC on bandcamp (US) and pretty sure I've bought
| from there well before I had a PayPal account.
| trinovantes wrote:
| I still use paypal to pay for stuff when I'm too lazy to walk
| to the other room to get my wallet. As a consumer, the price is
| the same.
| yread wrote:
| I use it if the seller forces me to type my CC number into
| their interface. If it's some payment provider, that's fine but
| I don't trust random webshops to keep my credit card details
| safe
| avereveard wrote:
| With virtual cards and whatnot I don't use PayPal anymore to
| protect the card number from circulation.
|
| But I still find them useful for long therm subscriptions to
| provider. That why when I need to change the card I don't need
| to login to (and remember) all websites where I have an ongoing
| payment plan
| npc12345 wrote:
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| And cancelling subscriptions via PayPal is easy too.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > For easy payment integration with Web apps there are
| countless tools.
|
| Could you (or anyone else) comment on these?
|
| I think the most popular indeed are PayPal and Stripe, whereas
| any others (like Paddle) are more niche or some others (Alipay)
| are just more regional.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I certainly put Revolut in the same category as PayPal. No
| morals, anti-consumer policies, very little protection.
| colinb wrote:
| I can't comment on their morals or views on customers, but I
| think they've been governed by banking regulations for some
| time now. In my country (.ie) that's their claim. Banking
| regulations come with quite a lot of consumer protection,
| both national and EU originated.
| danpalmer wrote:
| In the UK they are not covered by the FSCS.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Yeah, I think they only have banking licence in
| Lithuania, so EU only.
| Andys wrote:
| I like using it for subscriptions, because it lists them all in
| one place and gives me a hassle-free way to cancel each of
| them.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| The value is that it's easy from the perspective of the user.
| You mentioned that you use Revolut for one thing, direct card
| payment for another, and other tools for web app integration.
|
| PayPal offers all that in a neatly packaged solution. It's no
| surprise users would choose that instead of 3+ different
| services that serve different purposes
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Places not served by Revolut, small time sellers that don't
| have the capacity/infrastructure to process cards, etc.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I'm wondering wow difficult can it be to just set up Stripe
| in addition to PayPal. I've set one up without any legal
| entity at all, just as a plain old human being resident of
| Estonia, and it seems to just work for occasional payments.
| Should work in US, too.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Try doing it in Thailand for example. There're plenty of
| countries where neither Stripe nor Revolut are present...
| patio11 wrote:
| News you may potentially be able to use: Stripe (which
| employs me) launched in Thailand about 2 weeks ago.
| atirip wrote:
| I only buy from merchants that offer PayPal (there are few I
| trust by card, like Amazon). And the reason is that whatever it
| happens, I can always get my money back with PayPal. It
| happened 3 times in last 5 years that seller took the money and
| never shipped anything. I got all them resolved very quickly.
| egorfine wrote:
| It's true. Indeed you can get your money back with PayPal.
|
| It took my company three years of litigations and finally
| PayPal did in fact return our money.
| croes wrote:
| That's BS. Had a seller screwing me over who "sold" me a VR
| headset.
|
| He gave me a UPS tracking number which belonged to a package
| that was delivered to another city, another person, was part
| 1 of a 3 package delivery and weighted 28kg, pretty heavy
| weight headset. The only match was the zip code everything
| else had nothing to do with me.
|
| So I complained to Paypal, gave them all the data that showed
| that the tracking number wasn't from the right package and
| still PayPal let the seller keep the money.
| solarkraft wrote:
| This is a relatively old trick at this point, so it's crazy
| that it still works. Effectively makes their protections
| useless.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Aside: Where do you live that has a postal service where
| zip codes match in different cities? Sounds like someone
| misunderstood the point of a postal [zip] code. Or, did I
| misunderstand?
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| As a rule of thumb, sure, you can presume that zip codes
| follow political boundaries (city, county or state). The
| vast majority of times, that's the case.
|
| However, if you do a lot of mailing, you'll discover some
| zip codes that cross state lines (because some remote
| area is actually served by a post office across the state
| line).
|
| Or some area where several towns & cities map to a single
| "preferred" name that the USPS uses (example: Centennial,
| CO).
|
| Zip codes are for the convenience of USPS and to make
| their life easier. The edge cases are very fuzzy &
| fractal.
| nulbyte wrote:
| This is more common than you would think in the U.S. ZIP
| codes don't always follow geopolitical boundaries. There
| are two cities in 57717. Some ZIP codes even cross state
| boundaries; USPS won't state it when you look up ZIP
| 42223 in their web tool, but part of it covers Tennessee.
| For example, the Pratt Museum is in Fort Campbell TN but
| has a Fort Campbell KY mailing address.
| croes wrote:
| It's more one of the villages surrounding a small town.
| They all share the same zip code but are 10km apart.
|
| We have even cities that share a zip code but are in
| different federal states.
| LoganDark wrote:
| If you live in the US, you could use Privacy for this
| (privacy.com). Not only do they allow you to create a
| separate card for each merchant, pause/unpause/close/set
| spend limits and so on, but their support is so nice that
| half the time they'll just give you credit instead of making
| you bother with a proper chargeback. And you can do that over
| _email_.
|
| Works even with merchants that don't support PayPal. Everyone
| supports good old card numbers.
| astura wrote:
| Can only load privacy.com with a bank account last I
| checked, I prefer to use a credit card.
| LoganDark wrote:
| If you contact their support over email they'll enable
| the option for you to use a card as your funding source.
| But IIRC you have to connect a bank account first with
| more than $50 in it and then you can switch to the card.
|
| Source: I use a card as my funding source.
| cute_boi wrote:
| Well, we can use credit card charge back for such purpose?
| lmm wrote:
| You can, but you probably have to call up your bank during
| business hours, wait on hold for a while, and then get
| given the runaround for a while. PayPal you just push a
| button and it's done.
| ripe wrote:
| My Bank of America credit card lets me dispute charges
| online, with a simple series of web forms. Very
| convenient.
| switch007 wrote:
| In the UK my experience with chargebacks is that they're
| very biased towards the company. It's a drawn-out process
| during which you get harassed by the company's anti-
| chargeback team in to accepting an ex gratia payment etc.
| you have to supply lots of evidence and when the company
| provides some poor quality evidence the bank goes "oh well
| that's decided then" as if responding was sufficient.
| dazc wrote:
| This is true, you have to very persistent with the
| chargeback route, sometimes only a threat of legal action
| against the bank will move things forward.
| pauljurczak wrote:
| One of my credit cards had a 7% cash back promotion last
| quarter, if used through PayPal. I saved a couple of bucks.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| My co published an App in Germany as recently as 2 years ago
| and PayPal support was almost unavoidable. It turns out that
| penetration of credit and debit cards in Germany is
| significantly behind other parts of the EU and many of them
| habitually use PayPal for e-commerce payments.
| lytefm wrote:
| > It turns out that penetration of credit and debit cards in
| Germany is significantly behind other parts of the EU.
|
| Yep. Therefore, we also use PayPal a lot to transfer money to
| a friend when we're at some place that is cash only and
| someone doesn't have cash on them. No need to type an IBAN
| and wait for a day.
|
| Also, it's a great backup solution for online purchases if I
| don't want to share my credit card details or things don't
| work. For example, many vendors borked the 3d visa
| verification process so PayPal often was the only realistic
| option.
| ce4 wrote:
| > IBAN and wait for a day.
|
| The delay can be skipped in many cases via the IBAN instant
| payment option. Requires both banks to be participating in
| the program and trust each other (the delay will happen if
| additional checks are needed, for example if the transction
| gets flagged for manual inspection, eg if you write "funny"
| purpose text, etc)
| Scharkenberg wrote:
| AFAIK banks here charge extra for that.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Where's here? Haven't seen this in Germany.
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| Really, my only banking experience here in germany is
| with n26 and since they offer it free, I thought that was
| the norm.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Use Wise (https://wise.com). In Germany especially N26 is
| also popular but IMO they went downhill quite a bit as
| soon as they realized that being a neobank is a losing
| venture.
|
| Source: I work in finance.
| jaclaz wrote:
| I don't know, but I checked a few of these "neobanks" (or
| whatever they are) available in Italy and they seem more
| or less to have in common 3 things:
|
| 1) they offer services for free or for a low cost
| (compared to "normal" banks)
|
| 2) when these services work, they do work
|
| 3) when - for whatever reasons - these services do not
| work their assistance/support is either not-existing or
| unreachable, and when (if) you manage to contact them
| they provide no solutions/fixes and more likely than not
| you end up with your account frozen or closed (with no
| actual idea of the reasons why it was frozen/closed)
|
| Surely there must be something (in EU) that complicates
| matters (anti-money laundering Laws/limits to
| transfers/National and EU Authorities/whatever) but right
| now it seems to me like none of them is actually reliable
| (if it is used as secundary or tertiary card/means of
| payment they are fine but I wouldn't trust any of them as
| "primary".
|
| BTW - just for the record - right now N26 has been
| ordered to suspend making new accounts in Italy by the
| Bank of Italy (since March 2022) assertedly due to not
| full compliance with anti-money laundering checks:
|
| https://n26.com/en-it/restrictions-on-new-n26-customers
| mrspencehimself wrote:
| Honestly, fantastic writing style lol... made reading a legal
| case about arbitration clauses a _riveting_ read!
| wdb wrote:
| Yes, I also won my case against Paypal after a topic from a
| person on this site. I was able to get my money back from Paypal
| that they froze before the start of the pandemic and it appears
| they might be forced to pay me interest over it too
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| First off, congratulations!
|
| Second, I wish there was more followup from "My account got
| limited/blocked, and I need help." HN posts of that nature--
| assuming they reach the front page--typically get resolution in
| enough time that the person with the issue posts a followup, but
| I don't think that's the norm.
| Infrid wrote:
| Sure, but not without blaming the victim first. There are
| countless threads where the victim is accused to be wrong.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It's possible they are wrong. Assuming they are a victim
| isn't right. Questions to establish that aren't accusations.
| walrus01 wrote:
| The important thing for Americans to understand is that Paypal is
| _not a bank_.
|
| You can have an "account" and hold money in it and it may
| function similar to one, but it has none of the federally
| mandated legal protections of being a bank.
|
| Some much more recent Fintech startups such as Chime are legally
| underpinned by something that is an FDIC regulated bank.
| creeble wrote:
| Indeed, it's the magic that made PayPal what it is today.
|
| Back when it was x.com, they were trying to figure out how to
| avoid being a bank, and they did it with something that
| violated credit card merchant agreements: by crediting accounts
| without correlated purchases (you can still do this today,
| depending on your card processor I think).
|
| That got noticed, so they just started holding the money
| instead. I never figured out how a company that holds your cash
| with exclusive rights to do anything they want with it has
| avoided banking regulation.
| mro_name wrote:
| how would one do that from within the EU? Is it still sending a
| certified letter to Omaha?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The EU PayPal entity seems to be PayPal (Europe) S.a.r.l. et
| Cie, S.C.A. Attention: Legal Department, 22-24 Boulevard Royal,
| L-2449 Luxembourg.
|
| Legal claims fall under the Luxembourgish laws. I'm not seeing
| any language in the Dutch terms of service that mention any
| arbitrage.
|
| Another thing to note is that the European branch of PayPal
| actually has a banking license. The Dutch national bank lists
| the permits (though the registration was done in Luxembourg,
| obviously): https://www.dnb.nl/en/public-register/information-
| detail/?re...
|
| It looks like the 2007 basic banking license was extended
| around 2018.
| sofixa wrote:
| PayPal probably have a legal entity in the EU, and different
| terms of service/privacy policy (to reflect EU regulations like
| GDPR), so probably not. You're free to read the double digits
| terms of service you agreed to to check the exact process :p
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| There was an article posed on HN not long ago (I am unable to
| find the link), where some business tried to sue Paypal for
| stealing them money (yes literally) and Paypal were giving
| them the run around claiming that this or that jurisdiction
| had no authority to sue them, maybe somebody can find the
| link, basically paypal claimed they couldn't be sued in any
| country.
|
| In the EU paypal is deemed a bank I believe thus must abide
| by the same rules as regular ones. That's not the case in US.
| ryan-c wrote:
| wooque wrote:
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| People probably don't like it being called a mental illness.
|
| It's not a good idea to generalize a whole group of people
| when that only applies to a very small percentage, while the
| rest make the decision because they've been led to believe
| they should feel that way by no fault of their own.
| bbarnett wrote:
| There's probably a lot of political stuff I am unaware of here,
| but a "sex realist" immediately made me understand what Colin's
| views probably area.
|
| I don't get the "legitimatize" bit. If I acknowledge that some
| people believe the Earth is flat, and call them flat Earthers,
| how does this make their position legitimate?
|
| Is the thought process here to pretend such people do not
| exist? I don't grok.
| blep_ wrote:
| "Realist" is a bit non-neutral in the attitude it expresses
| toward the view. Compare it to "planet shape realist" and
| it'll be more obvious.
| gwd wrote:
| "Flat earther" is an accurate representation of their
| beliefs; it doesn't say whether those beliefs reflect reality
| or not. "Sex realist", however, implies that this Colin
| person's beliefs correspond to reality, while his opponent's
| beliefs do not. Imagine if flat earthers started going around
| calling themselves "geological realists" -- anyone who then
| used that term would pretty clearly identify themselves as
| aligned with them.
|
| _Everyone_ on both sides of this debate would claim to be a
| "sex realist". I'm not at all familiar with Colin's views,
| but "trans denier" or "biological determinist" might be more
| neutral terms.
| drstewart wrote:
| Ah yes, "realist" is loaded but "denier" is neutral.
|
| So can we neutrally consider TRAs to be "biological
| denialists"?
| gwd wrote:
| OK, I agree that "denier" is probably not neutral. I was
| more focused on explaining why "realist" wasn't neutral,
| than actually coming up with a better option
| (particularly as I don't actually know anything about
| this Colin person we're talking about).
| bbarnett wrote:
| I guess I get you, but, it don't see the point of even
| bringing it up. Or caring.
|
| Why?
|
| Because worrying, caring about this is the ultimate red
| herring.
|
| Imagine there are two sides. One which believes all blue
| people should be exiled, another which is opposed...
| including the blue people.
|
| Now, to add to this frey, people start shouting at the name
| the other group calls themselves?!
|
| I mean really, it's like caring that someone is putting too
| much salt on a sick of salted butter.
|
| How about we argue about the salted butter itself?!
|
| Worse, every erg of energy complaining about the name, is a
| wasted breath to fight the real issue. And even worse, the
| other side chose the name, likes it, so what's the point.
|
| People will always think of them by this name. Always.
| DoctorNick wrote:
| Well, good to know. I was about to forward this.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| It sounds like you have the same intentions as PayPal then:
| PayPal doesn't want to do business with them because of their
| personal views, and you don't want to forward their story
| that you implied you found worth sharing, because of their
| personal views.
| DoctorNick wrote:
| Yes. The key difference is that I am not a fucking payment
| monopoly, jackass.
| andreareina wrote:
| Different Colin Wright as the commenter here.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| Very off topic and political. If I wanted to read that kind of
| comment I'd go to Reddit.
| tyho wrote:
| Does this have any relevance at all to the PayPal article or
| are you just trying to ensure that people who disagree with you
| on certain topics are shunned from society?
| mihaaly wrote:
| Independent from who is thinking what I believe it is nowhere
| near the PayPal's business to decide about the acceptable
| social behaviour when it is not sanctioned by law.
|
| But when an act violates a law they are mandated to report to
| authorities and inform the affected parties about it, about the
| nature of violation they discovered.
|
| Based on what I seen here (unluckily cannot read the article in
| full, I do not want to register in yet another something for
| one article), also based on personal experience with them, the
| PayPal is a shady party here.
| sverona wrote:
| I will just point out that "sex realist" reads to me as a
| dogwhistle constructed by analogy with "race realist" and take
| my leave.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Same as "gender critical", it's unsubtle dogwhistles in the
| form of "we're only asking questions".
| sendfoods wrote:
| what makes sex-realism hateful?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It erases everyone who does not consider themselves inside of
| a binary, which is a lot of people. It excludes and erases
| them, tells them they don't fit in and that they should just
| conform (or they'll be made to).
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| "erases"?
| googlryas wrote:
| As someone who doesn't follow any of this, having just heard of
| "sex realism", do trans people generally think they are a
| different biological sex than what their DNA and gene
| expression shows? I thought trans was about changing gender,
| not changing sex.
| ryan-c wrote:
| > a different biological sex than what their DNA and gene
| expression shows
|
| Sex characteristics are expressed primarily via hormones.
| That is why, for example, a person with an XY chromosome
| karyotype and complete androgen insensitivity syndrome will
| appear fully "female" externally.
|
| Hormones are affected by DNA and genes, but can be overridden
| to alter secondary sex characteristics. Ideally (in most
| cases), this would be done pre-puberty, but even later in
| life it is possible to induce a "second puberty" which
| results in major changes. Further changes, including to
| primary sex characteristics, can be achieved surgically.
|
| These changes do not need to follow a standard "male" or
| "female" template. Characteristics can be mixed, matched
| and/or rejected. Current medical technology has limits, but
| they are beyond what you might expect.
|
| > I thought trans was about changing gender, not changing
| sex.
|
| This is a matter of perspective and how one defines things.
|
| An alternative view is that it is about affecting external
| change to match what the internal state was all along.
|
| More poetically, one could describe it as "the realization
| that one needn't continue wearing the disguise that society
| seemed to demand".
|
| Or, if one wants to be shitposty about coming out after
| having established a career, "New Game+".
| hairybobbins wrote:
| This article, by Colin Wright, is a good introduction to the
| 'sex realist' viewpoint, and the arguments it addresses:
| https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/sex-is-not-a-spectrum
|
| A good example of an opposing point of view to 'sex realism'
| is this article (and one that's most often cited in online
| discussions of this particular topic):
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/stop-using-
| phony...
| hvdijk wrote:
| > I thought trans was about changing gender, not changing
| sex.
|
| Mostly true, but it's confusing. Historically, sex and gender
| have been used interchangeably. That is slowly changing.
| There are a lot of places that refer to "sex" where
| "biological sex", as you put it, is not what is meant. See
| e.g. how trans people can still get their "sex" updated on
| documents that refer to sex and not gender, and how many
| places described as single-sex are actually closer to single-
| gender.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| > Historically, sex and gender have been used
| interchangeably.
|
| This really isn't true. "Sex" was the only word anyone used
| for most of history; the idea that there's a distinction
| between "sex" and "gender" was invented by the sexologist
| John Money in 1955.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender#History_of_the_concept
|
| "Gender" was originally a term from linguistics that had
| nothing to do with biological sex.
| hvdijk wrote:
| The Wikipedia article you link to also claims that the
| 1882 Oxford Etymological Dictionary of the English
| Language said that one meaning of gender was sex. Other
| dictionaries from well before 1955 also support this. In
| fact, the 1828 Webster's dictionary, available online,
| specifically says the meaning of sex came first, the
| meaning in grammar followed from that. The separation of
| sex and gender is recent, you're right about that and
| that's what I was saying too, but you're wrong that sex
| was the only term used before that.
| thagsimmons wrote:
| Almost nobody who reads this but doesn't already know who Jesse
| Singal is will bother to do the mountains of reading needed to
| figure out the reality, so I feel that I need to provide a
| counterpoint. I'm quite familiar with Singal, and my reading is
| that he's judicious, fair, scrupulous, compassionate, but
| willing to explore touchy issues in a way that triggers his
| critics. We need more like him, and I encourage people who are
| interested enough to take a look and come to their own
| conclusions.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I've taken a look, and I'm seeing a cisgendered man having
| Opinions on transgender teenagers. I've seen enough.
| intrasight wrote:
| The article and comments here talk about "money in the account".
| This confuses me as my use of Paypal is to send and receive
| money. The money is in my bank account - a "burner" account as I
| use it for Internet stuff and never have more cash there than is
| necessary for whatever transaction I'm doing. I never thought of
| Paypal as a bank where I can park funds.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This piece demonstrates excellent writing skills - bits of humor
| interspere information-dense sections on legalese, allowing the
| reader to easily absorb the information.
|
| As far as the byzantine arbitration process described here,
| signed off on by the US Supreme Court and adopted across most of
| the corporate world, with the obvious intent of making it hard
| for ordinary citizens to sue corporations for damages, see this
| quote:
|
| _" Control the coinage and the courts -- let the rabble have the
| rest." Thus the Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you:
| "If you want profits, you must rule." There is truth in these
| words, but I ask myself: "Who are the rabble and who are the
| ruled?"_
|
| -Dune, by Frank Herbert
| SilasX wrote:
| Yes, I know, I really get amused by references to "I fought the
| law and the law won", that takes real creativity to come up
| with! Never would have seen the pattern if I got into a dispute
| with a large corporation and then was victorious!
| jibe wrote:
| There should be real skepticism about arbitration in user
| agreements, but didn't make it easier in this case? Only
| someone rich or famous enough to entice a free lawyer could
| afford to sue PayPal over a suspended account. But many many
| more people could afford to try arbitration.
| ufmace wrote:
| That's what I'm thinking. Okay this was a little weird and
| byzantine, but wouldn't it be like 1000x harder, more
| expensive, and more byzantine to hire a lawyer, file an
| actual lawsuit, and take it at least past the initial stages,
| i.e. surviving a motion to dismiss?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| There are probably greater risks to a company if the case
| goes to something like a jury trial. Here, they may have run
| afoul of 'political discrimination' which some locales have
| made illegal. For example, there was a 'refusal to provide
| services to a Trump employee' case in New York:
|
| > "Had the incident taken place in Washington, D.C., it would
| have likely been illegal. The District of Columbia has an
| anti-discrimination law covering political affiliation. In
| Madison, Wisconsin, it most certainly would have been. The
| city's broad non-discrimination clause defines political
| beliefs and physical appearance in its law. Political views
| can include 'opinions, manifested in speech or association,
| concerning the social, economic, and governmental structure
| of society and its institutions.' "
|
| Hence a dedicated person could plausibly incorporate their
| business in the District of Columbia, and then bring a
| (potentially very expensive and public) lawsuit against
| PayPal on the basis of political discrimination. Such
| incidents might be relatively rare, but they could also have
| major negative PR effects as well as the possibility of large
| jury awards, outcomes that binding arbitration is designed to
| avoid.
|
| https://huckleberry.com/blog/right-to-refuse-service/
|
| As far as where the line between 'respectable political
| affiliation' and 'member of a violent organization' lies,
| Irish history is worth looking at, i.e. Sinn Fein vs. the
| IRA.
| [deleted]
| _nalply wrote:
| Thanks. I got turned off by "one weird trick", but on your
| recommendation I decided to read the whole thing anyway. It was
| worth it.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| > PAYPAL WILL COVER THE COST OF ARBITRATION: .. PayPal isn't
| alone here as Etsy has basically the same provision, as does
| Amazon Pay and many others.
|
| > (Notably, neither Square nor Stripe offer to cover arbitration
| costs, and _Stripe even requires the loser of the dispute to pay
| the winner's entire legal expenses._
|
| yikes.
| einpoklum wrote:
| In recent years, financial institutions - Paypal being one of
| them - have had an increased tendency to deny service to clients
| based on their having espousing unpopular views. Glenn Greenwald
| has recently written on this matter:
|
| https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-consortium-imposing-the...
| ryan-c wrote:
| drstewart wrote:
| Then don't read the article
| hksoftware wrote:
| Nice bait
| thagsimmons wrote:
| In the interest of fairness, here is Singal's response to that
| page:
|
| https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/glaad-took-false-previous...
|
| For what it's worth, I'm 100% with Singal here.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Has he ever said anything like "trans rights" though? Why is
| a (seemingly) single, childless, straight and cis man
| involving himself so much in trans teenagers? He's got an
| Agenda and it isn't sitting right.
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| Because he's a journalist? "This smells funny. A science
| reporter doing journalism on a controversial issue..."
| kurisufag wrote:
| >Why is a (seemingly) single, childless, straight and cis
| man involving himself so much in trans teenagers?
|
| I fail to see how this is on any level unusual.
|
| The idea of a "teenager" only exists in the first place to
| facilitate disconnected adults imposing ideas upon them for
| their own good.
| bb010g wrote:
| Further in the interest of fairness, here's a response to
| Singal in general, including his "When Children Say They're
| Trans" story for the Atlantic that he defends there:
|
| https://proteanmag.com/2022/04/22/singal-and-the-noise/
|
| Singal defends conversion therapy and uses poor science to
| defend his claims. I'm not sympathetic.
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| From the linked article:
|
| > "Behind a veneer of empathy and concern, Singal has
| supplied anti-trans narratives that the right has found
| appealing."
|
| As an occasional listener to Singal's very good podcast
| (which covers mostly internet controversy), I have to say
| -- Singal comes across as thoughtful and empathetic,
| precisely because _he actually seems to be_ thoughtful and
| empathetic.
|
| So, briefly, a generally left-leaning, big city journalist
| writes several thoughtful, empathetic takes on trans
| children and gender dysmorphia that don't play into the
| established lefty narrative, and, of course, it gets
| treated as heretical. The problem is and was not that
| Singal is a bigot, or that he's just plain wrong. The
| greatest problem many have with Singal is that he is not
| following a prescribed narrative.
|
| These issues are now a matter of public concern whether we
| like it or not. When politicians in my state are banning
| gender affirming medical procedures for trans children, we
| need more light not less, because (and this shouldn't be
| hard to believe) the real problem actually is the (half
| true) established narratives. Good journalism is good
| because it can help us understand more than two sides of an
| issue.
|
| And when someone like Singal, who is obviously operating in
| good faith, is treated like a pariah when they dare to say
| something difficult and unpopular among their in-group, it
| makes me dislike the partisans for this issue more and
| trust them less.
|
| > Singal defends conversion therapy and uses poor science
| to defend his claims. I'm not sympathetic.
|
| This really does drastically overstate even the linked
| article's, not particularly thoughtful, case.
| DanBC wrote:
| > or that he's just plain wrong. The greatest problem
| many have with Singal is that he is not following a
| prescribed narrative.
|
| No, it really is as simple as him being plain wrong.
| a_shovel wrote:
| Saying Singal "obviously" operates in good faith is an
| exaggeration. Michael Hobbes on Twitter has a few threads
| regarding Singal where he shows how Singal likes to move
| the goalposts and accuse people of being "irresponsible"
| for making straightforwardly true claims (even ones that
| are supported by his own evidence). [ https://twitter.com
| /search?q=from%3ARottenInDenmark%20jesse&... ]
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| We can go pretty deep in the weeds in a thread that is
| AFAIK flagged and dead.
|
| > Saying Singal "obviously" operates in good faith is an
| exaggeration.
|
| From what I've heard and read of Jesse's, he seems to
| take great pains to be honest and fair. He seems _to me_
| to obviously be operating in good faith. Or as I would
| expect a curious, thoughtful journalist to act. But, yes,
| you and others may come to other conclusions.
|
| And, unfortunately, my experiences re: Hobbes's
| journalism have not been as glowing. They've frankly been
| disappointing. Hobbes seems to lack the very compassion
| and empathy Singal seems to obviously have. Hobbes tends
| to paint what seem _to me_ to be good-faith disagreements
| as grand moral violations.
|
| But I may need to see more and maybe I'm mistaken?
|
| > Singal likes to move the goalposts and accuse people of
| being "irresponsible" for making straightforwardly true
| claims
|
| I think you need to be more specific re: this claim.
| Unsurprisingly, a link to all the subtweets someone has
| made about Jesse Singal isn't very helpful.
| a_shovel wrote:
| The word "seems" is kinda the crux of the issue here.
| Singal has the tone of a curious, thoughtful jouralist
| who enters into research with no pre-established biases,
| and Hobbes has the tone of a guy who gets into Twitter
| arguments. The problem is that tone is not important,
| what's _true_ is important. You can 't determinte the
| truth just through the tone of the person communicating
| with you. A tone of thoughtful neutrality doesn't make
| something true, and a tone of belligerence doesn't
| indicate a lie.
|
| I discussed the example I was referencing in my response
| to ggreer. Here's a link to the twitter thread, for
| clarification: https://twitter.com/RottenInDenmark/status
| /15820924737360076...
|
| I'd like to see an example of what you mean regarding
| Hobbes. I think that'd help me a lot to understand your
| position.
| mustache_kimono wrote:
| Theres a lot to mine here, but I'm really not going to be
| the one who gets in a tiff with you about this.
|
| I think you need to step away from the keyboard, dude.
| a_shovel wrote:
| Okay, that's just rude.
| ggreer wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's Hobbes who is acting in bad faith.
| Most of his links are to things that don't support his
| claims. For example, he'll claim that puberty blockers
| are completely reversible, but link to an NHS site that
| says some long term effects are unknown[1], and though
| GIDS claims the physical effects are reversible, GIDS was
| shut down due safety issues.[2]
|
| Hobbes also accused Jesse of recruiting detransitioners
| from a transphobic website[3][4], but the site in
| question only allows females to join, so Jesse couldn't
| have used that site to find the people he interviewed for
| his article.
|
| Lastly, Hobbes blocks his opponents, then screenshots
| their tweets and argues against them. This makes it much
| harder for his targets to respond to him and correct the
| record. It really seems like he doesn't care about what's
| true, just what he can get others to believe.
|
| 1. https://twitter.com/RottenInDenmark/status/15820931910
| 080921...
|
| 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20220728150640/https://www
| .theti...
|
| 3. https://archive.ph/cl9U8
|
| 4. https://kyschevers.medium.com/telling-the-whole-story-
| a-clos...
| DanBC wrote:
| The unsafeness of the Tavistock clinic had nothing to do
| with puberty blockers - Tavi didn't prescribe[1] any
| puberty blockers to any child. And while the clinic
| provided by Tavistock is closing there will be many other
| clinics opening. Provision of gender affirming care to
| children is being expanded.
|
| [1] This is the big problem with threads like these. You
| can just lie and no-one knows any different because
| there's so much disinformation being spread. You
| shouldn't spread disinformation, and you should feel bad
| about doing so.
|
| The fact that you don't understand the basics (that
| Tavistock didn't do any prescribing) but you feel
| confident enough to comment is _peak_ fucking HN. Bunch
| of dunning kruger cunts.
| a_shovel wrote:
| Singal claimed that the NHS removed a claim from their
| website that puberty blockers were reversible. Hobbes
| showed a screenshot from the NHS website showing that the
| claim was still there. Singal (and you) changed the topic
| from whether the NHS made a claim, to whether there were
| unknown long-term effects of puberty blockers. Hobbes is
| obviously correct here.
|
| GIDS is being replaced with multiple centers providing
| similar services primarily due to issues with capacity,
| extreme wait times, and overcentralization, based on
| advice from the Cass Interim Report, which also noted
| issues with inconsistent care. Other organizations,
| including the Endocrine Society [0] and the APA [1], also
| describe puberty blockers as reversible.
|
| Your second paragraph doesn't seem to be true. "The site
| in question" is 4thWaveNow, which is a blog; you don't
| 'join' it like a forum. I think you've got it confused
| with the dating website.
|
| Your third paragraph is unsupported.
|
| [0] https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-
| room/2021/e...
|
| [1] https://www.psychiatry.org/File%20Library/About-
| APA/Organiza...
| thagsimmons wrote:
| Obviously people need to make up their own mind, but I do
| hope that they'd read what Singal actually writes and not
| base their opinion on a mean-spirited, vengeful hit-piece
| like this.
| rippercushions wrote:
| ryan-c wrote:
| The author, in fact, brought it up. The fact that he works
| with someone who has a problematic history is relevant to
| contextualize.
| hvdijk wrote:
| It isn't guilt by association when the article directly uses
| anti-trans rhetoric.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| hairybobbins wrote:
| Why do you find this offensive?
|
| Wright's key points regarding 'sex realism', as I understand
| them, are that sex is not a spectrum (as many people are
| claiming these days) but a male-female binary, and that sex is
| still an important characteristic in many circumstances, such
| that it cannot realistically be supplanted by 'gender identity'
| or similar.
|
| Seems like a reasonable viewpoint to me, and not one that would
| generally be considered offensive for others to mention.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Intersex people are living proof that it's not _always_ a
| binary.
| leephillips wrote:
| An "intersex" person (now usually described by doctors or
| biologists as a person with a disorder of sexual
| development, or DSD for short) is either male or female,
| just like any other human being. So to use the rather silly
| terminology under dispute, "binary". The "disorder" is a
| non-typical development of sexual characteristics of the
| person's sex: a disorder of male development in a male, or
| of female development in a female. We can't even mention
| the disorder without implicitly affirming the sex
| categorization that it affects. The "binary" is part of the
| definition of homo sapiens.
|
| Every "intersex" person is either male or female. Many in
| that community object to others describing them as some
| kind of other sex and, especially, using their medical
| condition as an ignorant cudgel to advance the "trans"
| rights agenda.
| dawnbreez wrote:
| This sounds like you're conflating biological sex (i.e.,
| having both breasts and a penis) with gender (i.e.,
| person IDs as female). I understand why; they use almost
| the same terms. However, it is important to note that, if
| you are describing a person who was assigned female at
| birth, and continues to identify as female, that's
| entirely describing their _gender_ , not the state of
| their biological sex characteristics.
|
| In other words, if a person experiences DSD, but self-
| identifies as male or female, what you are describing is
| not proof that sex is a binary, but rather proof that a
| person with DSD can experience gender dysphoria.
| leephillips wrote:
| I don't see where I've conflated anything, nor do I
| understand your attempt to show where I have. "Biological
| sex" is redundant; sex is a biological classification.
| There isn't any other kind.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It may SEEM like a reasonable viewpoint to you, but it's not
| grounded in reality.
|
| Saying sex is a binary is excluding anyone that doesn't fit
| within that binary. And if that's something you can't
| imagine, then it's not a subject you should have or voice an
| opinion on.
| implements wrote:
| It's grounded in the reality 99.98% experience - that
| individuals are biologically differentiated into the male
| (inseminating) or female (gestating and nursing)
| reproductive role.
|
| Stress reproductive role there - as unique individuals they
| have limitless other personal and social roles they can
| fulfil, and to be honest I don't see these as naturally
| gendered, nor feel it would be desirable for it to be so.
| implements wrote:
| Well, you could downvote - but, given as the first
| paragraph seems to be biological fact, perhaps you could
| instead mount a reasoned defence of gendered personal and
| social roles, and why they should have primacy over sex
| as defining components of the identities of "man" and
| "woman".
|
| As someone born in the 60s, a time when gendered roles
| began to be considered limiting and harmful, I would
| genuinely love to see a defence - at least one beyond "It
| makes people with gender dysphoria happy" (which is a
| good thing, but not obviously the right thing given the
| opportunity for discrimination between genders and
| expected conformity to normative gender stereotypes).
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| > if that's something you can't imagine, then it's not a
| subject you should have or voice an opinion on.
|
| That's a dangerous thought process. Silencing people who
| don't understand things surely cannot be good as a whole.
| hvdijk wrote:
| A brand new account created just to post this. Nothing
| suspicious about this at all.
| richbell wrote:
| > Nothing suspicious about this at all.
|
| This type of low effort comment is generally frowned upon.
|
| Perhaps they didn't feel comfortable discussion
| controversial matters on their main account?
| hvdijk wrote:
| That explanation is directly ruled out by GP's comment:
| the GP doesn't think this is controversial.
| hairybobbins wrote:
| I know it's a controversial topic. I'd rather it wasn't,
| and that, given the wide-ranging impact on policy and
| law, people could discuss this freely without e.g.
| getting banned from online payment services and social
| media sites, being doxxed by activists, and so on.
| hvdijk wrote:
| If you know it's controversial, we now know "not one that
| would generally be considered offensive for others to
| mention" was, at best, being disingenuous. Is there
| anything else?
| hairybobbins wrote:
| I meant generally as in, most people, who don't take an
| active interest in this topic.
|
| I know it's controversial to those who do. But I think
| that in itself is worth challenging.
|
| I mean, in the comment at the top of this thread, we have
| someone who became extremely offended at even the mere
| mention of someone with an opposing viewpoint to their
| own. In an article that isn't even about that topic. Does
| that seem a reasonable reaction?
| dawnbreez wrote:
| The trick here is that we're looking at dogwhistles.
|
| To someone outside the theater of culture-war this takes
| place in, this looks like a series of perfectly ordinary
| statements. Of _course_ sex is binary, and that statement
| doesn 't sound like it conflicts with gender being a
| spectrum, because sex and gender are obviously separate.
|
| However, to someone who has lived within this theater of
| culture-war--who have been dealing with this rhetoric _as
| rhetoric_ , which is what it is--this is a red flag. "Sex is
| binary" is the opening salvo in a common rhetorical strategy,
| which goes "Sex is binary, you're either male or female" ->
| "I'm just stating a fact, no need to be defensive" -> "See,
| this is why I don't trust trans people" -> "This is why _you_
| shouldn 't trust trans people, they contradict basic facts
| like sex being binary". Notice the magic trick here--by
| picking phrasing that's plausibly deniable, and then framing
| any reaction to it as "disagreeing with Science", this guy
| can make it _look_ like he 's disagreeing with trans people,
| and make it _look_ like trans people are somehow in the wrong
| for this, without ever actually having to stop and explain
| why.
|
| That's not even getting _into_ the fact that, frankly, "sex
| is binary" isn't actually correct. There are plenty of
| examples of species that don't actually fit into a binary sex
| model correctly--species which can reproduce both sexually
| and asexually, species which can change sex in order to find
| mates more reliably, and even cases where more than two sexes
| can be observed (such as in bees, for whom "worker", "drone",
| and "queen" all have different sexual characteristics). This
| goes against what most of us were taught when we were young,
| but that's part of the rational approach to the world:
| sometimes the model that we were given when we were in
| elementary school is wrong, and a newer model is a more
| accurate description of what's going on.
|
| And that's part of the goal, here. "Sex realism", here, has
| nothing to do with reality, just as "religious
| fundamentalism" rarely has anything to do with the
| fundamentals of whatever religion is involved. Rather, "sex
| realism" is a rhetorical strategy which uses the _aesthetics_
| of skepticism to make one 's argument _seem_ sensible,
| polite, and rational. It relies on the audience never
| actually _questioning_ whether the "sex realist" is
| describing reality, or reading beyond the face value of what
| they are saying.
|
| The especially insidious part of this tactic is the way it
| weaponizes the reactions of people who understand what the
| dogwhistle means. People like me, who have spent hours upon
| hours discussing these things, immediately recognize the
| tactic at play--and more often than not, react loudly and
| angrily. After all, I've seen this conversation play out over
| and over, and _invariably_ the guy claiming to _just_ be a
| sex realist turns out to be an asshole, just like how the
| guys who claim to be "race realists" inevitably start citing
| things like the 13/50 argument (which is a whole other can of
| bad-statistics worms). But that's part of the plan--when I or
| someone like me says "What the fuck, get out" in response to
| the initial statement, that's when the sex-realist turns to
| the audience and says, "See how upset this person is over
| these _definitely true things I just said_! Clearly, if they
| 're losing their cool this badly, I must be right!" And this
| _works_ , because it short-circuits past the part where the
| sex-realist's argument is evaluated. By framing things in
| this way, the sex-realist can convince members of the
| audience to trust him _before evaluating his argument_ ,
| which lets him avoid actual scrutiny of what he's claiming.
|
| TLDR: Wright is framing a simplified, not-really-correct
| statement as absolute truth, and then framing the people he
| opposes as unreasonable and irrational, to take advantage of
| the fact that human beings use trust to save processing power
| and avoid having to actually evaluate arguments.
| Vecr wrote:
| I'm not sure why people talk about insects and goldfish and
| things like that, when someone says "sex is binary" and
| they are talking about humans, they mean "human sex is
| binary". Anything that may or may not be true about other
| species does not matter for the argument. I'll say "as a
| general rule, human sex is binary" if you really want that
| changed.
| [deleted]
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I want to ditch PayPal.
|
| My problem is that PayPal is the primary, and often only method
| of payment accepted on online auction sites, specially person-to-
| person of used electronics.
|
| I buy electronics by the boat load (I think, never seen the boat)
| to experiment with them. Most Asian or individual sellers will
| accept just PayPal.
|
| Yes, it is a monopoly in the niche field of online auctions.
| intrasight wrote:
| I accept that Paypal is part of my financial life. Therefore I
| aim to manage the risks. I use a "burner" bank account to send
| and receive funds. It's a bank account with a bank with whom I
| do no other business.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| PayPal is such a weird company. I was a loyal customer for 20
| years until I wanted to convert my account from business to
| personal (I closed the business) and the site refused to do so.
| after months of calls with support, it became clear that no one
| was able to do this (something locked the flow and no one was
| able to see what; I guess my account was so ancient, it has some
| db flags no longer used but still checked by their backend?), so
| I asked just to terminate my account. That also was not possible.
| It took 6 months to figure out why; my company still existed they
| said; it most certainly did not. It took 2 months to find out why
| they thought that; apparently, somewhere in the past 20 years,
| they searched for my company in the NL company register and
| attached _the wrong company number_ to my account. So I told them
| the real number and they said; now all is fine, we can even
| convert it to personal. 1 hour later I received an email from
| PayPal that I am permanently banned as I am trading with a
| business account of which the company no longer exists... Well
| done!
| rutierut wrote:
| This is so quintessentially Paypal, were they upfront about
| their services, they'd put this testimonial on their home page.
| londons_explore wrote:
| To be honest I'm surprised they even tried as hard as they did.
| Normally in my experience if you cost them more than about 30
| minutes of staff time fixing any problem, they'll ban your
| account just on the basis that you're costing them more in
| customer service than the revenue you bring in.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| The Dutch support is really very good. Before they had local
| support it was even worse. But the dutch support, as far as I
| have used them (quite a lot from begin '20 to begin '22 as I
| tried to convert my account), they were professional and
| nice, but have very little power and need to talk to their US
| counterparts all the time (which, I presume, is why the
| weeks/months fly by over something I would assume is a
| support-portal lookup).
|
| Edit; I guess by having written this, if a PayPal manager
| reads this, the Dutch support will get an 'urgent read now!'
| email from their manager to not waste so much time on
| customers...
| hvdijk wrote:
| I'm glad your experience was better than mine. I had to get
| a lawyer involved after the Dutch support told me I would
| be refunded if I returned an item, and then after I sent it
| back, denied the refund.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Well, my story didn't end well, but at least they were
| nice and courteous. Maybe I just got lucky there but my
| experience with US support was random phone hang ups,
| infinite queues to 'I will just fetch this info, moment
| sir', people being short, blaming me, barking insults
| etc.
|
| I guess you found out as well, like me, the US has the
| last say in any matter and they don't really listen to
| their overseas colleagues if their flagging algo/AI says
| 'nope'.
|
| Did the lawyer work? If it did, I am happy that at least
| it seems possible to go against them. I will never touch
| them again though.
| hvdijk wrote:
| The lawyer did work, thankfully.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Not if you want to get banned lol.
| jwrallie wrote:
| I've contacted one time PayPal Japan to transfer money to a
| personal account from PayPal Brazil because it gave me some
| error. They told me I should contact PayPal Brazil because the
| recipient account was not verified. On PayPal Brazil, they told
| me that I could only transfer personal money through Xoom,
| which is another service from PayPal. But when I tried, Xoom
| doesn't work with Japan. After I asked PayPal Japan again, they
| confirmed only business accounts can receive money in Brazil.
| It took around 3 weeks going back and forth until they could
| give me a clear statement saying that what I tried to do was
| impossible. I wondered why the interface was allowing me to
| chose this kind of transfer in the first place.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| So it's a payment service that can't transfer money between
| accounts?
| pelasaco wrote:
| Probably because he is/was Dekasegi
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekasegi and there are some
| specific rules to move their money back to Brazil
| duxup wrote:
| Brazil (1985 film) was not supposed to be an instruction
| manual!
|
| The scale of these absurdities is just wild. Years ago I signed
| up for a domain for my blogger.com blog. At some point google
| decided to transfer the management of that domain to google
| workspaces ... I don't know how or why but they did. So when it
| expired I was told to login to google workspaces, but I don't
| have a google workspaces account at the email they kept
| emailing me at ... and their emails never told me what email to
| login with.
|
| To get help on the website I was told to contact my google
| workspaces administrator ... but not who that is.
|
| I figured out who the domain registrar was and told them my
| story and they helped me get a hold of the domain. Kudos to
| them to having a very fast and effective support team.
|
| Now even more years later I get more emails from google
| workspaces that my account is expiring and sorta implying some
| consequences (but not actually saying) ... not that I can do
| anything about it.
|
| At this point I have it in the back of my mind that any given
| day google could find this weird situation, assume malice, and
| ban me... a situation that 1. I didn't make happen. 2. I can't
| even fix. 3. I don't even know how it happened / what the
| problem is / google won't really tell me.
| simiones wrote:
| I think Kafka's The Trial is an even better fit - in Brazil,
| you could at least see some of the machinations unfolding -
| in The Trial, like in reality, you only hit a wall of the
| bureaucrats telling you that your case is being studied with
| no way of knowing when or if you will ever get anything more.
| gw98 wrote:
| This sounds like AWS support on a bad week.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Are there options for small business payment processing that
| don't invite comparisons to dystopias? I think crowdsourced
| patronage is a great model for society to fund creative works
| now that copyright regulations have largely been captured,
| but with Patreon ignoring security, and paypal being this
| disfuncional... Is there a safe way to accept something like
| vinmo for micropayments?
| bragr wrote:
| Paypal owns venmo
| pelasaco wrote:
| by the way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X27Sw7r6gB8 (DEF
| CON 30 - Paul Roberts - Brazil Redux - Short Circuiting Tech-
| Enabled Dystopia Right to Repair)
| samstave wrote:
| They are not a "weird" company -- they are a piece-of-shit
| company
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Exactly, they have a monopoly and abuse it in the worst
| possible way. I'm glad someone sued them and won, his
| politics don't matter to me.
| criddell wrote:
| What do they have a monopoly in? I've only used them as a
| consumer to pay for things and they are usually one of
| several options I have.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| What monopoly? I've literally never used PayPal. I did use
| Venmo for a while til they said they were closing my
| account unless I provide them with information I already
| provided them with, I decided that I'd let them close it
| and now they won't stop offering me $10.
| [deleted]
| carapace wrote:
| Paypal owes me $200.
|
| They locked an account and wouldn't unlock it.
|
| Years later I get a letter from the State Comptroller about how
| they are about to receive my balance ($200) from PayPal because
| they (PayPal) haven't been able to contact me (Don't they have
| my email address?) There's a number to call, I call it, the
| PayPal employee says "How do you want your money, check or in
| your PayPal account?" I choose check, of course, because the
| account is locked.
|
| And that's the last I ever heard of it. No check. No new letter
| from the comptroller. PayPal must have kept it. They found a
| loophole in the system.
|
| It's literally not worth my time to pursue it, so instead I
| just mention this story in public from time to time.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| rippercushions wrote:
| I lost access to a PayPal account I had used for years, because
| one day they decided they _needed_ to know the CVV of a long-
| expired credit card, and refused to let me log in without it.
|
| Surprisingly, customer support was very helpful and let me
| transfer out the (minimal) balance in the account to another,
| completely unconnected PayPal business account I happened to
| have. Which is even more disconcerting, because it meant they
| were sufficiently convinced about my identity to let me
| transfer money out, but not enough to let me login in. Insane.
|
| I'm still (very, very occasionally) using that business account
| today, even though the underlying business also ceased to exist
| years ago. I wonder when the banhammer will drop?
| mihaaly wrote:
| I closed my account when they discovered suspicious activity
| in my account, at least claimed so but apart from locking me
| out until I prove I am me with photo ID copy and independent
| sources about my address (bank statement, utility bill, ...),
| basically collecting more data on me, they did not make any
| steps tracking down this suspicious activity, not even
| explaining what it was, they did not report it to the
| authorities! It was complete unresponsiveness when I asked
| for details on the event, asking about reference to the case
| at the authorities, told them that I will report it myself to
| the authorities (someone doing something to my money!!) and
| need some info, nothing, complete silence!
|
| My conclusion that they simply lied to my face!
|
| I was around the time when PayPal got some bank like
| regulatory status in Ireland and might have needed some more
| data so they forced me to provide through a bullst claim. At
| least this is the only scenario I find feasible. I had very
| little money there, after gaining access again (giving them a
| lot of data on me) there was no sign of any activity there
| that not belonged to me, nothing.
|
| I decided that their practices are shady and I will never
| ever trust them!
|
| (I did not report it eventually to the authorities, even the
| preparation for it took time with little supporting material,
| and I already had an unrelated matter to tackle, it was
| simpler leaving them and spread their reputation. PayPal
| definitely did not bother reporting it as I was never
| approached or questioned about the suspicious activity in my
| account ever. It was about 10 years ago btw.)
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Same happened to me. Did they keep sending emails you need
| to agree to their new terms of service and to refuse you
| need to agree to their new terms?
| The_SamminAter wrote:
| Same here, someone tried to transfer money to me and PayPal
| decided that they didn't like that, and that they wanted my
| ID. Then, they wouldn't let me close my account, and when I
| finally provided some sort of ID they claimed that my name
| is wrong and as such can't do anything until I provide more
| ID with an account name change request. All of which
| apparently makes the account impossible to close. Or so I
| presume, having talked with support four separate times,
| receiving completely different reasons/answers, and then
| finally saying that they'll force-close my account, which
| they never did.
|
| Now when I do absolutely need to use PayPal, I use my card
| on a friend's account (with their permission).
| tluyben2 wrote:
| This is normal for almost all (all?) large corps; they
| don't have to tell you why the account was
| terminated/blocked so it could be anything; something you
| said online (about them / founders etc), something you paid
| they don't agree with, just ROI vs TCO for your spending
| habits etc etc. They don't have to tell you and 'suspicious
| activities' is an easy one: adsense/adwords uses it as
| well. They use 'if we would tell you what it is exactly and
| how we measure it, it will allow evil actors to use that
| against us'.
| lozenge wrote:
| It's actually illegal to tell clients when a Suspicious
| Activity Report is filed. It's quite possible they filed
| one. It wouldn't necessarily trigger any investigation but
| it would be kept on file.
| wsc981 wrote:
| _> I lost access to a PayPal account I had used for years,
| because one day they decided they needed to know the CVV of a
| long-expired credit card, and refused to let me log in
| without it._
|
| LOL, I kinda had the same issue, but I had to remember the
| last 4 numbers of some old credit card. Couldn't find it in
| any email, so yeah ... couldn't use my Paypal anymore.
| rippercushions wrote:
| This was a while ago, so maybe it was the four digits and
| not the CVV for me as we? Not sure, but I do recall that
| the card was waaaaay expired (as in, a decade ago) and it
| took me a while to figure out what card they were even
| referring to.
| xnorswap wrote:
| Transferring money out is far lower risk than unauthorised
| account access.
|
| If they transfer money out and it turns out it was fraud they
| can easily compensate the original account holder by putting
| the money back in their account and there's little harm done,
| especially if the sums are small.
|
| If they give unauthorised account access then there's far
| greater harm including risk they'll get penalised by
| regulators over data security as well as the damage being
| potentially hard to undo if further changes are made to the
| account.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| The point is that requiring cvv for a login is stupid, not
| that the risk levels are different.
|
| Does it become acceptable to require the blood of my first-
| born because the risk levels are different?
|
| Of course not. They're not even allowed to store that in
| the US (PCI-DSS), so the other poster must not be in the
| US.
| ballenf wrote:
| They probably couldn't see the CVV but were going to run
| the card and see if it verified.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| fair enough
| jefftk wrote:
| Your GP had "it meant they were sufficiently convinced
| about my identity to let me transfer money out, but not
| enough to let me login in. Insane", and your parent is
| explaining why that's a non-insane thing.
| rippercushions wrote:
| GP here. I found every part of the process insane. To
| enumerate:
|
| 1) getting locked out for not having the CVV of some
| random card that expired a decade earlier
|
| 2) being allowed to transfer money out, but not to login
| into the account
|
| 3) being allowed to keep my second account, even though
| they don't trust me enough to give me access to the first
|
| None of these make sense individually, and they make even
| less sense as a whole.
| markwkw wrote:
| In a large corporation, different precesses can be handled
| and developed by separate teams often working in silos.
|
| After many years, there may not be a force to assure these
| processes are consistent, have rules that make sense in
| relation to one a other. I think the answer may just be
| it's "dumb" because no one cares or has the power or will
| to look at things holistically.
| adolph wrote:
| > If they transfer money out and it turns out it was fraud
| they can easily compensate the original account holder by
| putting the money back in their account and there's little
| harm done, especially if the sums are small.
|
| _But, once he 'd learned that all of the other 1/2 cents
| are left floating around inside the megacorporation's
| database, Gorman hacked into the company's computer system
| and funneled them all into his next check, accruing the
| amount of $85,789.90, (a crime that would be later be known
| in slang as "salami slicing")._
|
| https://superman.fandom.com/wiki/Gus_Gorman
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Maybe for your account they registered the wrong number as
| well?
|
| I could've gone on using it if I hadn't told them. But in NL
| this is an issue (hence I tried so hard); bank accounts to
| companies need to be closed asap when the company gets closed
| and you definitely cannot pay or receive money with them as
| that will anger the tax office.
| jeromegv wrote:
| But PayPal is not a bank or registered as a bank, so would
| that matter?
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| They certainly are. From their NL terms and conditions
| [1]:
|
| > Who provides the Service?
|
| > The Service is provided by PayPal (Europe) S.a r.l.et
| Cie, S.C.A. (R.C.S. Luxembourg B 118 349) ("PayPal") to
| registered users in the European Economic Area. For
| details on how to reach PayPal, please refer to this page
| on Customer Service, or in an emergency, see "What to do"
| below.
|
| > PayPal is duly licensed in Luxembourg as a bank (or
| "credit institution" in legal terms). We are under the
| prudential supervision of the Luxembourg financial
| regulatory authority, the Commission de Surveillance du
| Secteur Financier or CSSF. The CSSF maintains a register
| of the organisations that it regulates at https://supervi
| sedentities.apps.cssf.lu/index.html?language=.... PayPal
| is number B00000351 on the register, but you can also
| look us up on the register by our name.
|
| [1] https://www.paypal.com/nl/webapps/mpp/ua/servicedescr
| iption-...
| missedthecue wrote:
| Does "very very occasionally" mean you use it frequently or
| infrequently?
| kingofpandora wrote:
| It means infrequently.
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| Same for transferring accounts to a different country. Can't be
| done according to their useless help line. Has to be closed and
| reopened under a different email addr according to them
| TrevorJ wrote:
| I could be wrong, but isn't it flat-out illegal for a company
| to refuse to remove/delete your account on your request? I'm
| pretty sure GDPR, at least, requires this explicitly.
| kaetemi wrote:
| I have a business account that now has a whole series of
| notification boxes, some empty, one saying the account is
| permanently closed, and one saying I need to update KYC to
| restore the account.
|
| Filling in the KYC sometimes restores it, but then it gets
| locked again because the KYC changes account details, which
| triggers the KYC process and reverts the changes.
| FerociousTimes wrote:
| > 1 hour later I received an email from PayPal that I am
| permanently banned as I am trading with a business account of
| which the company no longer exists
|
| I hate that I have to do this and to be viewed as defending a
| vile organization like PayPal but this specific incident here
| could be the result of another department/silo
| (compliance/anti-fraud?) within the corporation issuing an
| immediate ban for your account to avoid or limit any regulatory
| burden.
| joebob42 wrote:
| It honestly doesn't really matter. That's a plausible
| explanation, but the customer shouldn't have to care / make
| special allowances because this is a big company with lots of
| people. It either does good things or it doesn't, and in this
| case it didn't.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| Yes in general
|
| But in this case they knew it was a special case and should
| have informed the other parts of PayPal so this would not
| happen.
|
| So this is not a good defense
| FerociousTimes wrote:
| I am not defending them at all, their total disregard for
| their customers, and lack of courtesy make them in my book
| one of the most awful companies to work with or patronize,
| but usually organizations of this gigantic scale are
| compartmentalized, and work in silos, and thus you have to
| figure it out yourself, or through an insider, how to
| navigate the bureaucratic maze, and accomplish the task at
| hand and not be disheartened with the initial frustrating
| response that you might get from the first line of contact
| with them.
| Tozen wrote:
| > PayPal is such a weird company...
|
| I disagree. ETSY and eBay appear just as weird, crazy, and up
| to various odd machinations. The Internet is littered with
| tales of people completely baffled and perplexed at having
| their accounts suspended without explanation, then getting the
| runaround or cold shoulder from customer service.
|
| There is also speculation about some type of secretive
| blacklist that is floating around and used by various companies
| for preemptive actions.
| the_other wrote:
| This story has pushed me over the line, finally triggering me
| to close my PayPal account. I can't describe the sum total of
| stimuli that brought me here, it's a gestalt, a gut feeling.
|
| Thanks. I feel lighter.
| rjh29 wrote:
| PayPal is excellent for buyers, horrible for sellers. Just
| don't keep any money in it and don't let them convert
| currency for you.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| But not keeping money on them is NOT enough as a seller to
| extricate yourself from that morass.
|
| They will find subtle ways to force-link your real bank
| account to paypal, and then its game over. They have the
| keys to the kingdom.
|
| One day you will get some random charge on your account
| that keeps growing and growing and you don't recognize the
| transaction at all, but you can't do anything because they
| can pay themselves from your linked bank account.
|
| I advise all businesses that use paypal that at worst case,
| link a completely unrelated bank institution to paypal, and
| then keep this secondary bank to low funds as often as
| possible.
|
| Otherwise, you will never know when paypal may poison the
| well and your physical bank business operating account is
| suddenly unavailable!
| rjh29 wrote:
| Definitely. My second sentence was directed at buyers.
| dustymcp wrote:
| This i use it often when buying stuff overseas, every time
| there has been anything i just dispute and get my money
| back.
| dhruval wrote:
| I have been trying to upload some information they asked to
| verify my business account. For a new business account I opened
|
| I already have 1 business and 1 personal account which is their
| limit and got permission from PayPal to open this one.
|
| I kept getting an error when I go through the official form.
| Possibly because I have a linked account already.
|
| So I talked to customer support and after a huge timesink and
| getting passed around between several agents and contacting
| them multiple times they gave me an alternative place to
| upload.
|
| Which worked but I think no one saw the documents as that
| alternate form.
|
| I contacted customer support again and they said that alternate
| upload form was just for personal accounts.
|
| In the end I just decided not to accept PayPal as means of
| payment for that business.
|
| Luckily wasn't a big deal for me in this case.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| you got off easy , friend
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > the strongest criticism for me [for Arbitration,] is its lack
| of transparency.
|
| ... and the incentive for an arbitrator to favour the corporation
| for repeat business.
| veddox wrote:
| FWIW, I had a successful arbitration process this year via the
| German Insurance Ombudsman after my bike was stolen and the
| insurance didn't want to pay. The process took a few months, but
| was pretty easy overall and I got my money back :-) (In the end,
| the insurance paid just to avoid further hassle.)
|
| Regarding PayPal: I've always avoided getting an account with
| them, because I generally don't like online services having
| access to my bank account. Two weeks ago, though, I was forced to
| create an account with them to pay a conference fee - just to
| have the PayPal account locked literally the minute it was
| created. I have no idea why, I didn't get any further
| information, and no useful response from customer service. So I
| guess I will remain a non-PayPal customer...
| thefounder wrote:
| I still fail to see this as a win given the waste of time.
| cflynnus wrote:
| bitcoin fixes this
| vehemenz wrote:
| ...while introducing ten other issues.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _For consumers, I suspect that much of the power "arbitration"
| seems to confer on corporations lies in its opacity_
|
| This one hundred times. There has been a surprisingly-effective
| PR scare campaign around arbitration in the U.S. Sure, for sexual
| harassment, it's a bad forum. That's approaching criminal
| territory. But for civil disputes, it's straightforward and
| cheap.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I'd have more faith in arbitration if it was offered as an
| option instead of being required by the TOS. If it's
| universally good for me, surely there's no reason to force me
| to use it?
| [deleted]
| Analemma_ wrote:
| It's "straightforward and cheap" because it always rules
| against the consumer. That's not a desired property of an
| adjudicator.
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