6 ms·

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 mi

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 8y 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 8y 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 8y ago
  The idea that companies cannot exercise any authority over their own product beyond what is explicitly forbidden by law is silly.
downandout 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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.
  - downandout 8y ago
    The issue here is that this company did not violate PayPal's TOS, yet they find themselves in this situation. BTW, I had a similar experience with PayPal, though my account was not open for 12 years. I didn't violate any TOS, and had no chargebacks - as in not a single one - and yet my account was effectively ghosted. I was handed a bunch of hoops to jump through, I jumped through them, and then nothing happened. The account sat in that state for so long that PayPal was eventually required by law to turn the money over to the state as abandoned. Only then was I able to get the money back - from the state treasurer (years after the fact). So if your policy documents don't actually govern your policies, then employees are banning businesses based on their personal value judgments. That is problematic for a large number of reasons.
    - ginsuown 8y ago
      > The issue here is that this company did not violate PayPal's TOS Untrue. Often the exact breach is legally prohibited from being publicly shared, but if a company is banned, then a TOS breach has happened. There is an unbelievable amount of red tape and compliance within every process, both digital and human, that occurs with regards to money and transactions. Especially in the fintech space, PayPal internally is bound to governmental regulations and auditing far more strict than any regulations imposed on customers. To suggest that PayPal can just close accounts at whim for any other reason than enforcement of legally binding terms and confiscate customer funds is simply absurd.

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 8y 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 8y 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 8y ago
The idea that companies cannot exercise any authority over their own product beyond what is explicitly forbidden by law is silly.

downandout 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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.
- downandout 8y ago
  The issue here is that this company did not violate PayPal's TOS, yet they find themselves in this situation. BTW, I had a similar experience with PayPal, though my account was not open for 12 years. I didn't violate any TOS, and had no chargebacks - as in not a single one - and yet my account was effectively ghosted. I was handed a bunch of hoops to jump through, I jumped through them, and then nothing happened. The account sat in that state for so long that PayPal was eventually required by law to turn the money over to the state as abandoned. Only then was I able to get the money back - from the state treasurer (years after the fact). So if your policy documents don't actually govern your policies, then employees are banning businesses based on their personal value judgments. That is problematic for a large number of reasons.
  - ginsuown 8y ago
    > The issue here is that this company did not violate PayPal's TOS Untrue. Often the exact breach is legally prohibited from being publicly shared, but if a company is banned, then a TOS breach has happened. There is an unbelievable amount of red tape and compliance within every process, both digital and human, that occurs with regards to money and transactions. Especially in the fintech space, PayPal internally is bound to governmental regulations and auditing far more strict than any regulations imposed on customers. To suggest that PayPal can just close accounts at whim for any other reason than enforcement of legally binding terms and confiscate customer funds is simply absurd.