11 ms·

PayPal Restores Seafile's Account after File-Monitoring Row

136 points by TimWolla 10y ago

ketzu 10y ago
http://www.golem.de/news/sperrung-paypal-entschuldigt-sich-bei-dropbox-alternative-seafile-1606-121694.html http://www.golem.de/news/sperrung-paypal-entschuldigt-sich-b... The original for everyone capable at reading German.
- heartsucker 10y ago
  Man sagt "capable of reading" und nicht "capable at reading." Tut mir leid, wenn das unhöfflich ist, aber ich gehe davon aus, wir alle besser schreiben wollen. :)
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    "Capable of" means "can", and sounds a bit patronizing in this context. "Capable at" means "is good at", and sounds okay.
    - sjansen 10y ago
      As a native English speaker, there is zero patronizing connotation. Whereas "capable at" is never used, so it just looks like a typo.
      - thaumasiotes 10y ago
        "Capable at" is sometimes used, and is correct; it's just significantly more unusual than "capable of". COCA (the Corpus of Contemporary American [English]) lists 32 results for "capable at", such as: > I don't think she's capable at this point of doing what's needed (spurious) > Goldenrod was most capable at locating specimens in the black intervals > a very cool band that's, you know, extremely capable at what they do > a helping agency capable at reaching out at low cost and high impact (not spurious, but this one feels unnatural to me -- I'd prefer of here) Anyway, 32 hits for "capable at", of which 17 are spurious and 15 are genuine; 14710 hits for "capable of" (I didn't bother to sample those, but the rate of spurious hits will be significantly lower). I believe StavrosK is correct that "capable of reading German" means the opposite of "unable to read German", while "capable at reading German" means "having a high skill level in reading German". I don't agree that "capable of" would be patronizing in this context, since it's very common in English-speaking forums for people to be totally unable to read German.
        heartsucker 10y ago
        There's a difference between "correct" and "how people actually talk." I was offering a correction because when learning a language, you don't want to sound like textbook. Sure, it's all technically correct, but the goal is to sound natural. I don't know anyone who says "capable at," so it "just sounds wrong."
        StavrosK 10y ago
        Basically, the two parses are different. One is "being <capable of>" something, as in "I didn't think he was capable of murder", i.e. "I didn't believe he could commit murder". The second parse is "being capable <at something", as in "be skilled <at something>". "I didn't think he was capable at murder" sounds weird and would mean "I didn't think he was very good at killing people", but you'd use it in something like "he was capable at math". The "patronizing" part was because "this is for people who are capable of German" sounds more condescending to me than "this is for people who can read German".
        thaumasiotes 10y ago
        > Basically, the two parses are different. I'm not convinced this is the case. Standard analysis would say that "capable of murder" parses as (capable (of (murder)), not ((capable of) (murder)). Assuming that analysis is correct, you have a prepositional phrase (with of) licensed by the adjective "capable" itself in specific, and a prepositional phrase (with at) licensed by the semantics of the adjective but not by "capable" specifically. Some examples of what I'm talking about: 1. "I believe in live-and-let-live." Here, the verb believe takes a complement that must be marked by in. An in-phrase with the same sense cannot be attached to other arbitrary verbs; it can appear here because it is licensed by believe. Invest also licenses an in-complement, with a meaning related to investing but unrelated to believing: "I prefer to invest in small companies". But "I affirm in live-and-let-live" is nonsensical despite being semantically very similar to "I believe in live-and-let-live". Affirm does not license such a complement. The adjective capable individually licenses an of-phrase in this manner. 2. "He ran to the park." Here, the phrase to the park is not licensed by the verb run. It is licensed by the semantics of running as a verb of motion, and can appear with the same sense attached to any motion verb: "He swam to the park"; "He ambled to the park"; "He somersaulted to the park"; etc. Capable licenses an at-phrase in this manner, just like good, skilled, adept, inept, competent, etc. 3. "The ceremony begins at 8:00." Here, at 8:00 is licensed by all verbs that exist now or might in the future. Semantically, it has nothing to do with the verb. The thing is, the parse tree you get for all of those cases is exactly the same. It's true that the of example is bound to capable more closely than the at example is, but the closeness doesn't lie in the parse tree, it lies in the level of generality at which the complement is licensed.
  - wnesensohn 10y ago
    Es heißt "unhöflich", und da fehlt ein "dass" (...gehe davon aus, dass wir alle...). Stilistisch etwas besser wäre: "Es tut mir leid, wenn das unhöflich wirkt, aber ich gehe davon aus, dass wir alle unseren Schreibstil verbessern wollen." (I'd say the first comma should be left out, but I have the tendency to leave out vital commas as well, so...) ;)
    - heartsucker 10y ago
      Bah. Das ist was passiert, wann man Deutsch in Berlin gelernt hat. Schlampig und umgangssprachlich.
  - ketzu 10y ago
    Thank you very much. I have a lot of "typo-creep" although I should know better.
ckastner 10y ago
And yet again, no explanation what this "illegal content" is supposed to be.
- mtgx 10y ago
  Or a change to a more clear policy for that matter.
Argorak 10y ago
So, they apologize. I'm sure the damage inflicted is noticable, will PayPal cover that? And this is the problem of the modern service industry: they never stand in for damages, even if the damage is inflicted through a wilful decision. As a client, you are at their whim.
bluetidepro 10y ago
Slightly off topic, but does anyone else feel like the article title used here ("Paypal apologizes to Dropbox Alternative seafile") is a pretty big slap in the face to Seafile? First off, why include "Dropbox Alternative"? Putting the competitor's name in an article title about the other company? Seems a bit odd/kind of putting down Seafile. That'd be like seeing "XYZ happens to Twitter alternative Facebook." Secondly, they didn't even capitalize Seafile's company name, but they did capitalize the competition's name (Dropbox). May not seem like much but it's pretty shitty, if you ask me. EDIT: I guess the 2nd point is more the fault of Google Translate. I still think the first point sticks. It's odd to have that in the title, it wouldn't be as weird if that was in the body of the article, though.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  I think this is standard journalism. I had no idea what Seafile is. Know I know. Lesser known companies get this treatment. "Intel in talks to buy mobile chip maker $unknown_company," for example. Its completely non-biased and a part of journalism. I don't see the controversy here.
  - bluetidepro 10y ago
    It may be standard to include it in the actual article, but it's not standard to have that in the title. Totally degrades the company the article is about by listing their competitor first (capitalized, when they aren't even capitalized) in the title.
  - arm 10y ago
    There was a previous article about them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11944011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11944011
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  That's Google Translate, original article says Seafile with a captial-S.
- TimWolla 10y ago
puddintane 10y ago
If not a duplicate at least here's a non translated form for English users. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11960092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11960092
- notwhereyouare 10y ago
  wow, at least the translated verion mentions seafile in the title. the fortine article doesn't mention it at all in the title, just dropbox alternative
  - puddintane 10y ago
    Yeah that site has odd SEO - I believe this is why Google uses multiple methods to parse an article title - as such I'm pretty sure they parsed the title from the <title> tag on that page If you search the link on most search engine's it shows that the title is "PayPal Restores Account of Dropbox Rival Seafile After Monitoring Row" "<title>PayPal Restores Account of Dropbox Rival Seafile After Monitoring Row - Fortune</title>" Of course the article title in-line doesn't have that but it was probably a bad move on the developer's part to not create as much duplicated content on the page would be my guess as to why that occurred. Either way it is very confusing I agree! Just thought users would like a non-translated form as not everyone can spend extra time re-reading sentences to understand the exact context of the article!
- sctb 10y ago
  We updated the link of this submission to the Fortune article from this: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.golem.de%2Fnews%2Fsperrung-paypal-entschuldigt-sich-bei-dropbox-alternative-seafile-1606-121694.html&edit-text=&act=url https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev....
FuturePromise 10y ago
Yeah, but they apologized in German.
al_chemist 10y ago
Let me guess "We are sorry that you went public with our unlawful request"?
- richardwhiuk 10y ago
  The request wasn't unlawful - it might not be legally required, but it's fine for any business to impose almost any requirement on any other business before doing business with them.
  - nailer 10y ago
    It violated EU privacy law if my understanding is correct.
  - Argorak 10y ago
    You are forgetting the legal concept of good faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith_(law) Making unlawful requests to your customers and otherwise threaten denial of services can be problematic.
- mtgx 10y ago
  "We're sorry you made us apologize over this."
awalton 10y ago
I still don't understand how anyone does business with Paypal. Their abuses and shitty business practices like this just continue, and will only continue to get more abhorrent. This is yet another tissue paper apology issued after the fact it's already cost someone business, and only offered after it made more bad press for Paypal. There are alternatives now. You don't have to keep doing business with these colossal assholes.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  Many people who won't give you their credit card number will pay you via PayPal, because PayPal is perceived to have more consumer protection. (They maintain that perception by having a massive bias towards consumers at the expense of merchants.) Some people who don't have credit cards use PayPal.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    I do it, because I feel paypal is safer than totallynotgonnagiveyourcardtochina.randomsite.com That may not actually be safer, but it feels like it. Though, I would be OK using most of the alternative payment services in this case.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Paypal follows the sane system of having the payer tell them who and how much to pay, instead of CC's process where the seller tells them "it's cool, the buyer totally wanted me to have $X" and the payment processor simply complies. /rant (Yes, 3-D secure exists, but as a user it's impossible to verify that the site is actually using it before handing over the CC info)
    - makomk 10y ago
      Well, Paypal gives the impression to buyers that they're the ones telling Paypal how much to pay anyway. If I recall correctly the amount displayed on the Paypal payment page is for information only and the API leaves it up to the seller how much to actually charge, and in some cases this may change (for example, because the site can't calculate shipping fees until Paypal gives them the buyer's address).
mtgx 10y ago
Sure, an apology - because the negative PR is starting to hurt Paypal. But how many other tens or hundreds of other companies experience the same kind of censorship from Paypal, but never get to cause the same level of outrage for Paypal to "apologize"?
JoshGlazebrook 10y ago
Paypal only apologizes when they can't get away with being themselves quietly.
pjc50 10y ago
Remember, customer outrage (sometimes) works!
binarymax 10y ago
The page does not translate very well, but is PayPal admitting fault here? Does this open them up to litigation from Seafile?
cheriot 10y ago
I've been hoping they would become a better partner as an independent company. Maybe this is the first sign.
ryan-c 10y ago
This appears to contains comments from a previous post that linked to google translate, but I don't see a comment from dang mentioning a change/merge. Too early in the morning?
- TimWolla 10y ago
  It was changed by 'sctb': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11961301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11961301
cprayingmantis 10y ago
After working with a non-profit who had transactions frozen because they mentioned Cuba in a comment field I have stopped using Paypal on all future projects. It's easy to implement for non profits but it's just not worth it to these people to have to worry about the hassle of actually getting their money.

136 points by TimWolla 10y ago

ketzu 10y ago

http://www.golem.de/news/sperrung-paypal-entschuldigt-sich-bei-dropbox-alternative-seafile-1606-121694.html http://www.golem.de/news/sperrung-paypal-entschuldigt-sich-b... The original for everyone capable at reading German.

heartsucker 10y ago
Man sagt "capable of reading" und nicht "capable at reading." Tut mir leid, wenn das unhöfflich ist, aber ich gehe davon aus, wir alle besser schreiben wollen. :)
- StavrosK 10y ago
  "Capable of" means "can", and sounds a bit patronizing in this context. "Capable at" means "is good at", and sounds okay.
  - sjansen 10y ago
    As a native English speaker, there is zero patronizing connotation. Whereas "capable at" is never used, so it just looks like a typo.
    - thaumasiotes 10y ago
      "Capable at" is sometimes used, and is correct; it's just significantly more unusual than "capable of". COCA (the Corpus of Contemporary American [English]) lists 32 results for "capable at", such as: > I don't think she's capable at this point of doing what's needed (spurious) > Goldenrod was most capable at locating specimens in the black intervals > a very cool band that's, you know, extremely capable at what they do > a helping agency capable at reaching out at low cost and high impact (not spurious, but this one feels unnatural to me -- I'd prefer of here) Anyway, 32 hits for "capable at", of which 17 are spurious and 15 are genuine; 14710 hits for "capable of" (I didn't bother to sample those, but the rate of spurious hits will be significantly lower). I believe StavrosK is correct that "capable of reading German" means the opposite of "unable to read German", while "capable at reading German" means "having a high skill level in reading German". I don't agree that "capable of" would be patronizing in this context, since it's very common in English-speaking forums for people to be totally unable to read German.
      - heartsucker 10y ago
        There's a difference between "correct" and "how people actually talk." I was offering a correction because when learning a language, you don't want to sound like textbook. Sure, it's all technically correct, but the goal is to sound natural. I don't know anyone who says "capable at," so it "just sounds wrong."
      - StavrosK 10y ago
        Basically, the two parses are different. One is "being <capable of>" something, as in "I didn't think he was capable of murder", i.e. "I didn't believe he could commit murder". The second parse is "being capable <at something", as in "be skilled <at something>". "I didn't think he was capable at murder" sounds weird and would mean "I didn't think he was very good at killing people", but you'd use it in something like "he was capable at math". The "patronizing" part was because "this is for people who are capable of German" sounds more condescending to me than "this is for people who can read German".
        thaumasiotes 10y ago
        > Basically, the two parses are different. I'm not convinced this is the case. Standard analysis would say that "capable of murder" parses as (capable (of (murder)), not ((capable of) (murder)). Assuming that analysis is correct, you have a prepositional phrase (with of) licensed by the adjective "capable" itself in specific, and a prepositional phrase (with at) licensed by the semantics of the adjective but not by "capable" specifically. Some examples of what I'm talking about: 1. "I believe in live-and-let-live." Here, the verb believe takes a complement that must be marked by in. An in-phrase with the same sense cannot be attached to other arbitrary verbs; it can appear here because it is licensed by believe. Invest also licenses an in-complement, with a meaning related to investing but unrelated to believing: "I prefer to invest in small companies". But "I affirm in live-and-let-live" is nonsensical despite being semantically very similar to "I believe in live-and-let-live". Affirm does not license such a complement. The adjective capable individually licenses an of-phrase in this manner. 2. "He ran to the park." Here, the phrase to the park is not licensed by the verb run. It is licensed by the semantics of running as a verb of motion, and can appear with the same sense attached to any motion verb: "He swam to the park"; "He ambled to the park"; "He somersaulted to the park"; etc. Capable licenses an at-phrase in this manner, just like good, skilled, adept, inept, competent, etc. 3. "The ceremony begins at 8:00." Here, at 8:00 is licensed by all verbs that exist now or might in the future. Semantically, it has nothing to do with the verb. The thing is, the parse tree you get for all of those cases is exactly the same. It's true that the of example is bound to capable more closely than the at example is, but the closeness doesn't lie in the parse tree, it lies in the level of generality at which the complement is licensed.
- wnesensohn 10y ago
  Es heißt "unhöflich", und da fehlt ein "dass" (...gehe davon aus, dass wir alle...). Stilistisch etwas besser wäre: "Es tut mir leid, wenn das unhöflich wirkt, aber ich gehe davon aus, dass wir alle unseren Schreibstil verbessern wollen." (I'd say the first comma should be left out, but I have the tendency to leave out vital commas as well, so...) ;)
  - heartsucker 10y ago
    Bah. Das ist was passiert, wann man Deutsch in Berlin gelernt hat. Schlampig und umgangssprachlich.
- ketzu 10y ago
  Thank you very much. I have a lot of "typo-creep" although I should know better.

ckastner 10y ago

And yet again, no explanation what this "illegal content" is supposed to be.

mtgx 10y ago
Or a change to a more clear policy for that matter.

Argorak 10y ago

So, they apologize. I'm sure the damage inflicted is noticable, will PayPal cover that? And this is the problem of the modern service industry: they never stand in for damages, even if the damage is inflicted through a wilful decision. As a client, you are at their whim.

bluetidepro 10y ago

Slightly off topic, but does anyone else feel like the article title used here ("Paypal apologizes to Dropbox Alternative seafile") is a pretty big slap in the face to Seafile? First off, why include "Dropbox Alternative"? Putting the competitor's name in an article title about the other company? Seems a bit odd/kind of putting down Seafile. That'd be like seeing "XYZ happens to Twitter alternative Facebook." Secondly, they didn't even capitalize Seafile's company name, but they did capitalize the competition's name (Dropbox). May not seem like much but it's pretty shitty, if you ask me. EDIT: I guess the 2nd point is more the fault of Google Translate. I still think the first point sticks. It's odd to have that in the title, it wouldn't be as weird if that was in the body of the article, though.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
I think this is standard journalism. I had no idea what Seafile is. Know I know. Lesser known companies get this treatment. "Intel in talks to buy mobile chip maker $unknown_company," for example. Its completely non-biased and a part of journalism. I don't see the controversy here.
- bluetidepro 10y ago
  It may be standard to include it in the actual article, but it's not standard to have that in the title. Totally degrades the company the article is about by listing their competitor first (capitalized, when they aren't even capitalized) in the title.
- arm 10y ago
  There was a previous article about them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11944011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11944011
lucaspiller 10y ago
That's Google Translate, original article says Seafile with a captial-S.
TimWolla 10y ago

puddintane 10y ago

If not a duplicate at least here's a non translated form for English users. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11960092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11960092

notwhereyouare 10y ago
wow, at least the translated verion mentions seafile in the title. the fortine article doesn't mention it at all in the title, just dropbox alternative
- puddintane 10y ago
  Yeah that site has odd SEO - I believe this is why Google uses multiple methods to parse an article title - as such I'm pretty sure they parsed the title from the <title> tag on that page If you search the link on most search engine's it shows that the title is "PayPal Restores Account of Dropbox Rival Seafile After Monitoring Row" "<title>PayPal Restores Account of Dropbox Rival Seafile After Monitoring Row - Fortune</title>" Of course the article title in-line doesn't have that but it was probably a bad move on the developer's part to not create as much duplicated content on the page would be my guess as to why that occurred. Either way it is very confusing I agree! Just thought users would like a non-translated form as not everyone can spend extra time re-reading sentences to understand the exact context of the article!
sctb 10y ago
We updated the link of this submission to the Fortune article from this: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.golem.de%2Fnews%2Fsperrung-paypal-entschuldigt-sich-bei-dropbox-alternative-seafile-1606-121694.html&edit-text=&act=url https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev....

FuturePromise 10y ago

Yeah, but they apologized in German.

al_chemist 10y ago

Let me guess "We are sorry that you went public with our unlawful request"?

richardwhiuk 10y ago
The request wasn't unlawful - it might not be legally required, but it's fine for any business to impose almost any requirement on any other business before doing business with them.
- nailer 10y ago
  It violated EU privacy law if my understanding is correct.
- Argorak 10y ago
  You are forgetting the legal concept of good faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith_(law) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith_(law) Making unlawful requests to your customers and otherwise threaten denial of services can be problematic.
mtgx 10y ago
"We're sorry you made us apologize over this."

awalton 10y ago

I still don't understand how anyone does business with Paypal. Their abuses and shitty business practices like this just continue, and will only continue to get more abhorrent. This is yet another tissue paper apology issued after the fact it's already cost someone business, and only offered after it made more bad press for Paypal. There are alternatives now. You don't have to keep doing business with these colossal assholes.

JoshTriplett 10y ago
Many people who won't give you their credit card number will pay you via PayPal, because PayPal is perceived to have more consumer protection. (They maintain that perception by having a massive bias towards consumers at the expense of merchants.) Some people who don't have credit cards use PayPal.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I do it, because I feel paypal is safer than totallynotgonnagiveyourcardtochina.randomsite.com That may not actually be safer, but it feels like it. Though, I would be OK using most of the alternative payment services in this case.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Paypal follows the sane system of having the payer tell them who and how much to pay, instead of CC's process where the seller tells them "it's cool, the buyer totally wanted me to have $X" and the payment processor simply complies. /rant (Yes, 3-D secure exists, but as a user it's impossible to verify that the site is actually using it before handing over the CC info)
  - makomk 10y ago
    Well, Paypal gives the impression to buyers that they're the ones telling Paypal how much to pay anyway. If I recall correctly the amount displayed on the Paypal payment page is for information only and the API leaves it up to the seller how much to actually charge, and in some cases this may change (for example, because the site can't calculate shipping fees until Paypal gives them the buyer's address).

mtgx 10y ago

Sure, an apology - because the negative PR is starting to hurt Paypal. But how many other tens or hundreds of other companies experience the same kind of censorship from Paypal, but never get to cause the same level of outrage for Paypal to "apologize"?

JoshGlazebrook 10y ago

Paypal only apologizes when they can't get away with being themselves quietly.

pjc50 10y ago

Remember, customer outrage (sometimes) works!

binarymax 10y ago

The page does not translate very well, but is PayPal admitting fault here? Does this open them up to litigation from Seafile?

cheriot 10y ago

I've been hoping they would become a better partner as an independent company. Maybe this is the first sign.

ryan-c 10y ago

This appears to contains comments from a previous post that linked to google translate, but I don't see a comment from dang mentioning a change/merge. Too early in the morning?

TimWolla 10y ago
It was changed by 'sctb': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11961301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11961301

cprayingmantis 10y ago

After working with a non-profit who had transactions frozen because they mentioned Cuba in a comment field I have stopped using Paypal on all future projects. It's easy to implement for non profits but it's just not worth it to these people to have to worry about the hassle of actually getting their money.