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I am truly disgusted by this comment and those with a similar sentiment below. Selling PBNs is not against Paypal’s TOS, regardless of whether or not you happe

I am truly disgusted by this comment and those with a similar sentiment below. Selling PBNs is not against Paypal’s TOS, regardless of whether or not you happen to dislike them. The point is that PayPal falsely asserted that a business violated its TOS, and that means that it could happen to anyone else - instantly and without explanation. That is the problem here.

exolymph 7y ago
Here is PayPal's TOS (although they may have multiple for different aspects of the service, and definitely for different jurisdictions), in case anyone else wanted to take a look: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full
dwaltrip 7y ago
I just googled PBN. It looks like it is a black-hat, completely inauthentic SEO tactic that has no legitimate value. Why on Earth or you defending them? Am I missing something?
- 1337biz 7y ago
  Because if what they are selling does not break any laws PayPal should not ban it. Or do you don't want PayPal to treat the world as their app store and pick and choose which software or service they find ok to sell.
  - driverdan 7y ago
    They already do that. There are a lot of legal things PayPal has banned. Try to use PayPal to buy firearms and see what happens.
  - village-idiot 7y ago
    The idea that companies cannot exercise any authority over their own product beyond what is explicitly forbidden by law is silly.
- downandout 7y ago
  You are indeed missing something. I am not defending them. But if they are doing something that PayPal hasn’t banned and obviously found acceptable for 12 previous years, it means that all businesses are in immediate danger of being instantly banned without explanation on the whim of any of thousands of PayPal employees. That is a huge problem, and should concern everyone that depends on them for payment processing. If you are subject to the whims and value judgments of individual PayPal employees, rather than policy documents, that is truly scary. Sell something that happens to offend a random employee's moral, political, or religious sensibilities? You might lose your account. What happens if a relative of a PayPal employee decides that you weren't fast enough with customer service, and tells them about it? Can that employee go searching for your account and kill it simply because they have a relative that wasn't impressed with the speed of your customer service? The point is that these companies establish written policies for a reason. If those policies are not being followed, then businesses shouldn't use PayPal - not because they want to defend PBN sellers, but because their own business may be at risk even when they do nothing wrong.
  - orthecreedence 7y ago
    > it means that all businesses are in immediate danger of being instantly banned without explanation on the whim of any of thousands of PayPal employees This has always been the case. Paypal is extremely liberal with funds they seize or what accounts they shut down. At least, that's the image of them I've had for over a decade. Maybe they've since changed...but I wouldn't store any real amount of money in Paypal for any amount of time.
  - ginsuown 7y ago
    Ummm....no. As a software engineer, I can assure you there are not "thousands of PayPal employees" that can just ban businesses at will. I don't even think engineers working on that particular piece of software have any jurisdiction over that. Time and time again people post complaints that PayPal banned them "for no reason", without cause, etc, but invariably when you do your research, they have violated the TOS, and they have often been warned by PayPal many times. They were scamming someone, exploiting return policies and systems, etc. People will conceal those facts, as well as their own actions which led to their consequences.

exolymph 7y ago

Here is PayPal's TOS (although they may have multiple for different aspects of the service, and definitely for different jurisdictions), in case anyone else wanted to take a look: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full

dwaltrip 7y ago

I just googled PBN. It looks like it is a black-hat, completely inauthentic SEO tactic that has no legitimate value. Why on Earth or you defending them? Am I missing something?

1337biz 7y ago
Because if what they are selling does not break any laws PayPal should not ban it. Or do you don't want PayPal to treat the world as their app store and pick and choose which software or service they find ok to sell.
- driverdan 7y ago
  They already do that. There are a lot of legal things PayPal has banned. Try to use PayPal to buy firearms and see what happens.
- village-idiot 7y ago
  The idea that companies cannot exercise any authority over their own product beyond what is explicitly forbidden by law is silly.
downandout 7y ago
You are indeed missing something. I am not defending them. But if they are doing something that PayPal hasn’t banned and obviously found acceptable for 12 previous years, it means that all businesses are in immediate danger of being instantly banned without explanation on the whim of any of thousands of PayPal employees. That is a huge problem, and should concern everyone that depends on them for payment processing. If you are subject to the whims and value judgments of individual PayPal employees, rather than policy documents, that is truly scary. Sell something that happens to offend a random employee's moral, political, or religious sensibilities? You might lose your account. What happens if a relative of a PayPal employee decides that you weren't fast enough with customer service, and tells them about it? Can that employee go searching for your account and kill it simply because they have a relative that wasn't impressed with the speed of your customer service? The point is that these companies establish written policies for a reason. If those policies are not being followed, then businesses shouldn't use PayPal - not because they want to defend PBN sellers, but because their own business may be at risk even when they do nothing wrong.
- orthecreedence 7y ago
  > it means that all businesses are in immediate danger of being instantly banned without explanation on the whim of any of thousands of PayPal employees This has always been the case. Paypal is extremely liberal with funds they seize or what accounts they shut down. At least, that's the image of them I've had for over a decade. Maybe they've since changed...but I wouldn't store any real amount of money in Paypal for any amount of time.
- ginsuown 7y ago
  Ummm....no. As a software engineer, I can assure you there are not "thousands of PayPal employees" that can just ban businesses at will. I don't even think engineers working on that particular piece of software have any jurisdiction over that. Time and time again people post complaints that PayPal banned them "for no reason", without cause, etc, but invariably when you do your research, they have violated the TOS, and they have often been warned by PayPal many times. They were scamming someone, exploiting return policies and systems, etc. People will conceal those facts, as well as their own actions which led to their consequences.