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PayPal is currently blocking all transactions containing the word “tardigrade”
- OnWriting 6y agoAnyone care to guess as to why? At face value it seems like a very odd word to censor, I have absolutely no clue what the motivation might be.
- Lagogarda 6y agocause it contains (starts with) "tard"
- eru 6y agoWhat would be wrong with 'tard'?
- matthewheath 6y agoIt's a shortened version of the slur "retard".
- _-___________-_ 6y agoThere is a blockchain-related project called tardigrade. I guess they just have a big list of crypto-related terms. Edited to add: or the arms dealer. Either seem likely.
- feu 6y ago"The sanctions also include two Cyprus-based companies and one Hong Kong-based company – Moonstorm Enterprises LTD, Tardigrade Limited, and Business Diversity Limited.The Department of the Treasury claimed that the companies are “owned or controlled by, or acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Tesic”." - https://balkaninsight.com/2019/12/10/us-expands-sanctions-against-serbian-arms-dealer/ https://balkaninsight.com/2019/12/10/us-expands-sanctions-ag...
- Lagogarda 6y agoThanks to PayPal I just learned a lot about Tardigrades. Interesting creatures.
- DarthGhandi 6y agoUnpopular opinion but I think we have a civic responsibility to put them on probes and crash them into every planet in the solar system. Those cute little water bears are nature's survivors.
- eru 6y agoWhy specifically a civic responsibility?
- DarthGhandi 6y agoThere's probably a better word but it resonates with some people. The desire to preserve other planets for the remote chance that there's life there and we can study it before turning up anyway and ruining things is misguided. We are the only known life in the universe, it's incredibly irresponsible to not propagate such things (just in case)
- kinganurag 6y agoThe solution paypal gave "don't use word tardigrade" is wrong from product point of view
- itronitron 6y agopaypal considers that a better solution than the alternative one "don't use paypal"
- _Microft 6y agoPer [0], a possible answer to this seems to be that an arms dealer had connections to a company called Tardigrade Ltd. and all transactions with firms like these are prohibited which is why the word "Tardigrade" made it into PayPal's filter. As long as companies like PayPal have issues like that, or with moderation in case of Youtube, Twitter or Facebook, I'd claim neither of these companies have actually solved scale. If they can not properly deal with the issues that arise of scale, they haven't solved it at all. They might be reaping the benefits and dumping the issues on others but they haven't solved anything else at all. [0] https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/1304564003859918849 https://twitter.com/kenshirriff/status/1304564003859918849 [1] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm849 https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm849
- bleepblorp 6y agoThese kinds of problems are a product of scale. For companies the size of Paypal, Google, or Twitter, the revenue from their operations is so great that leaving a few crumbs on the table by not handling corner cases is of no concern. Smaller companies can't afford to lose (for example) 10% of their business to corner cases. For large monopolies, a 90% solution is more than good enough.
- szhu 6y agoYes, large companies have solved their own money-making problems of scale by becoming so large that problems that we find important as a society become ignorable for their bottom line. That doesn't mean that they've solved the problems of scale that we care about as a society.
- eru 6y agoGoogle does care about 10%. But problems that are absolutely pretty big, might still only be 0.01% for Google.
- didibus 6y agoWhat's your treshold though? I mean, it's easy to get in a raising the bar fallacy here. If this happens to only say 0.1% of PayPal transactions? Would that be good enough? Why that treshold? What about 1% ? Or should it be 0.01% ?
- hrafn 6y agoHere's some context: https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/n7wg3w/paypal-tardigrade-error https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/n7wg3w/paypal-tardigr... Likely not due to the Scunthorpe problem like one might expect, but due to an arms dealer having sold weapons through a shell company named Tardigrade.
- ffpip 6y agoNon Amp - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wg3w/paypal-tardigrade-error https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wg3w/paypal-tardigrade-...
- gwd 6y agoNon-Vice: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/weird-seattle-retailer-archie-mcphee-hit-even-weirder-paypal-security-glitch/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/weird-seattle-retailer-archie-...
- xrisk 6y agoWhat’s wrong with Vice?
- gwd 6y agohttps://nextshark.com/naomi-wu-vice-controversy/ https://nextshark.com/naomi-wu-vice-controversy/
- Kliment 6y agoThere's many things wrong with Vice. In addition to the story in the sibling comment, they have a consistent track record of misrepresenting their reporting to sources, heavily editing interview responses to change the meaning of what the interviewee said, and in at least one case I directly witnessed inventing the entire content of an interview that never happened and publishing it. I would simply consider anything they write at least misrepresented and possibly entirely fictional.
- 6y ago
- nieve 6y agoFarther down the thread: A few people mentioned OFAC sanctions, so I investigated a bit more. In Dec 2019, US Dept of Treasury sanctioned companies linked to Serbian arms dealer Slobodan Tesic, including Cyprus-based Tardigrade Ltd. So PayPal flags tardigrade ornaments by mistake.
- skissane 6y agoPart of this is no doubt Paypal's fault, but part of it is also the fault of the US's over-the-top trade sanctions laws. The penalties for getting it wrong are so severe, it creates a strong incentive for companies to err on the side of caution even when doing so produces idiotic outcomes like this one.
- mrweasel 6y agoI don’t think it has to do with err on the side of caution. I don’t think PayPal has the technology to implement better blocking.
- skissane 6y agoThe problem is that if you make a false negative error, there is the risk of severe legal sanctions, if you make a false positive error, there are zero negative legal consequences. Hence the law encourages everyone to prefer false positive errors to false negative errors, and this is the result. If the legal incentives were different, the outcome would be different. The law could provide an efficient recourse in case of false positives – e.g. a legislated right to appeal, legislated SLAs for considering appeals (and penalties for failing to meet them), indemnification for the provider if they grant an appeal in good faith, an expedited process for judicial review of denied appeals, etc – but the law doesn't, and since there is no incentive for an efficient recourse, nobody provides one
- mrweasel 6y agoI understand the legal issue for PayPal, but then they got really lucky in this case. Tardigrade isn’t really a widely used word, so just blocking the word completely is “fine”, but what if the arms dealer in question operated under the name “Arts and crafts ltd”? Would PayPal have used another blocking system? I don’t blame PayPal for their reaction, but I also doubt that they actually have better solutions than keyword blocking.
- bleepblorp 6y agoDuplicate submission from several hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24445174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24445174
- _Microft 6y agoI check for popular sources (Quanta Magazine, Nautilus, Ars Technica, ...) but Twitter threads I usually just submit - if it's not someone super-duper well-known or popular here on HN. Foone's latest shenanigans would warrant a check for earlier submissions for example. My apologies.
- tzfld 6y agoSo this "internal security system" takes over the company even if they don't want this. This is so wrong I don't even know where to start.
- duskwuff 6y agoIt's a trade sanctions issue. PayPal could end up in deep shit with the Treasury Department if they let their front-line support techs override an OFAC match. There is almost certainly a way to handle this, but it involves talking to PayPal's legal department, and it will take time.
- wbl 6y agoOFAC match? The entities aren't matching just the product. It's like blocking someone from buying food at Joe's Cuban Resturaunt in Miami. Not what OFAC actually requires.
- tmikaeld 6y agoThis must be rough for the band "Tartigrade Inferno".. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm246J_436dbUOIHpra7J8A https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm246J_436dbUOIHpra7J8A
- LaSombra 6y agoI bet the folks at tardigrade.io are not happy.
- tus88 6y agoPoor little fellas.
- anthk 6y agoWith "tard" you can block any Spaniard or Latin American with any transaction setting the time after the afternoon...
- latte 6y agoYou have to thank the OFAC regulations for that - they have created issues for both businesses and customers in the name of political goals that don't have any relation to them.
- langitbiru 6y agoSo I guess it's nice to have an alternative payment method like cryptocurrency.
- tuiq03 6y agoI work europe based ecommerce company. paypal was blocking orders for any product that had “cuba” as pat of the name/description due to us cuban sanctions. although after talking with account manager, they have removed this filter for us.
- blunte 6y agoBased on my experiences helping a client with Paypal, even though we had written approval from one of their executives in Paypal risk management, we got shut down weeks later for violating the thing we explicitly got permission for. If I were you, I would expect something to trigger a blockage again (and ultimately decide, like many companies, that Paypal just isn't reliable).
- tuiq03 6y agothat’s proven by all other problems we have working with. but you cannot simply turn it off since it has huge payment share vs other payment methods
- YetAnotherNick 6y agoJust curious, why is allowing cuba in the description so important to you?
- therealmarv 6y agoSame for the word "Bitcoin". If you try to send something with this word to somebody it will block their and your account. For me this is an (kamikaze) attack vector.
- gruez 6y agoI mean, why stop at just "Bitcoin". Might as well put a bunch of the words in there to increase your chances (eg. iran, nuclear, uranium enrichment, north korea, isis etc.), kind of like https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-e&q=tiananmen+square+copypasta https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-e&q=tiananm...
- YetAnotherNick 6y agoOr just use "Cuba" somewher. It will have more effect than the rest all combined.
- sitzkrieg 6y agowhy is paypal and other payment processors getting caught out with this braindead text filter stuff? slam a grep somewhere instead of real effort?
- 082349872349872 6y agoThe obvious workaround is to move from edges to facets. Instead of Tardigrade (A) shipping arms to $TERRORISTS (B) and (B) sending money to (A) by paypal in a bilateral pattern AB, they should move to the next topological level. A ships arms to $EMBARGOED_PARTY (B), (B) sends money to $FREEDOM_FIGHTERS (C), and (C) sends drugs with street value to (A), making a triangular pattern ABC. Extension to tetrahedral trade is left as an exercise for the reader.
- ghego1 6y agoBased on my experience as a developer and user I can't understand how PayPal got so big and ubiquitous. I had the worst experience ever in trying to set up our recurring billing system with them, wasting several days of work, to the point that I simply gave up, switched to Stripe, and got everything up and running, in production, in hours. Even as a consumer I had a terrible experience when trying to send money abroad, for my rent, with Xoom, a PayPal service. They initially took the money from my PayPal account, told me that the money was on its way to the recipient, only to block it some days later for non specified reasons (refunded in my account). On top of that, I lost the option to use my PayPal account to send money, for what appeared to be a technical issue. Even if the system appeared to give me the option to use my PayPal account as a source of funds, telling me that the accounts were indeed connected, then when actually sending the money the option disappeared. To solve the issue I called Xoom, they told me that there was no way of reconnecting my account and that I had to contact PayPal. So I did and they told me that they couldn't do anything and that I had to contact Xoom. After few exchanges back and forth like these, I simply asked to close my Xoom account so I could open a new one and restore the link between my Xoom and PayPal accounts, but they told me that that was not possible and that to cancel Xoom I had to cancel also PayPal. So I gave up, used another service and got my money to my recipient.
- afiori 6y agoI'm not from the US and to me PayPal was always only a way to avoid filling in credit cards details on (random) websites. it always feels a bit weird to see people elsewhere rely on it for much more.
- aphextron 6y ago>I'm not from the US and to me PayPal was always only a way to avoid filling in credit cards details on (random) websites. And this is the answer. Paypal's existence comes down to the fact that they are the sole "legitimate" vector into the US financial system for a vast majority of the rest of the world. Because that's such a massive financial incentive, they can basically treat users however they wish and get away with it.
- wefwef23ggg23 6y agoEven Chinese have a better quality than any Californian overpriced сrар. Low IQ developers, pretending to be smart, but using a dictionary to block transactions, because their small brain is so incapable. Californians are the worst.
- fredsted 6y agoDon't use Paypal, or you risk randomly losing your money.
- 4ad 6y agoPretty much. I'll refer to something that happened to me a few years back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18783724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18783724
- someonehere 6y agoI forgot what happened once to my PayPal account but I remember calling them because I knew the issue I had couldn’t be resolved over the phone. The person on the other end had a canned response to my problem that didn’t answer why my account was the way it was. I just remember saying that I wanted to buy things, I have money to spend, why do you not want me to spend money with your service. Brief pause and then she said my account would be active again in a few minutes. Don’t even get me started on eBay. Support is non-existent for my issue so I had to lie in a different support request to get my issue looked at. Even then what they need me to verify transactions on my account is impossible.
- Krasnol 6y agoI hope the EU will come up with a central bank backed alternative soon.
- Dahoon 6y agoThe whole problem with PayPal is exactly that it isn't a bank so they can get away with all kinds of stuff a bank cannot. I doubt a bank backed competitor could survive against a business that can just lock an account with money in it and never pay them back. Not really a level playing field.
- Krasnol 6y agoIt's really hard to identify sarcasm on the internet.
- afiori 6y agoin the EU (instant) IBANs (that are slowly rolling out since some years ago) largely solve the problem. here PayPal is used a lot but mostly with external credit cards (like Google pay or apple pay)
- miga 6y agoSuch arbitrary prohibition is caused by "Know Your Customer" regulations. And it is anything but. Clear indication for regulatory audit, since the methodology is at fault here.
- _heimdall 6y agoI had a horrible experience with PayPal earlier this year. I needed to send $500 to an individual buying our house, they were paying cash and on such a tight timeline for closing that the closing docs were written up before they got back their inspection report and asked for an allowance. Paypal kept blocking the transaction even though it was just a simple person to person transfer. I was on chat with their support for nearly an hour. The person kept describing some black box of a security system that, for security purposes, no one manages or can see why transactions get flagged. I asked multiple times to speak to a manager or someone on the security team and was told consistently that managers won't have more info and there literally isn't a security team... Needless to say I haven't used them since and will do everything I can to avoid it. I have no problem if a flag is errantly raised on a normal transaction, but to say they literally don't have a security team is mind boggling.
- bbarnett 6y agoNO security team?! So they literally admitted that they don't have anyone actively monitoring transactions? Working to watch for fraud? Theft? Hacking? Wow, I may stop using them as well.
- cr3ative 6y agoThere is no security team which you may speak to.
- Demiurge 6y agoIt was a lie, of course they have all that, they just never speak to people. When was the last time you spoke to google support or manager? They collect notes and only when something escalates to a PR story or a high volume of complaints/failures/cancellations do they create some JIRA story and assign it to some engineer. A “business to consumer” internet giant will never let the consumers get passed the call center to talk to engineers directly, and engineers don’t want that either. It’s as much of a rule as that a business must be profitable. On the other hand, competent support is supposed to have tools to fix most issues. I also had a bad issue with some unauthorized withdrawal via eBay, from my paypal, in about 2004, and spent hours on the phone with no result. I wished I could boycott them after this, but no one cares, I just learned no to trust them because they are a terribly run company on the consumer support side. And I think it is because they deal so much with fraud. I don’t think we can do anything about it, except promote these stories.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- stevespang 6y ago"You can still purchase all our tardigrade items with a credit card through Shopify, but not through PayPal. " Good, use Shopify, screw PayPal . . . .
- awinter-py 6y ago'this is an arbitrary + stupid mistake by a company known for drawing lines in the sand over stupid rules' is the less scary answer here we know tardigrades can travel through space. what if the aliens are already here tardigrades founded paypal to demoralize us with arbitrary + stupid rules, and their only weakness is the streisand effect
- rosstex 6y agoThe only thing that would improve this comment is an embedded image of a tardigrade. Mods?
- CleanItUpJanny 6y agoan upvote to you my good sir
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoGDPR has a separate, less-known article that bans fully automated decision making without an appeals process: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/ It's unlikely you'll be able to get Paypal to actually comply with it, but going through a path that will hit someone familiar with GDPR and mentioning this article, and escalating via the DPA, is probably the most promising option Obviously doesn't help if you need something done quickly, because especially if you need to get the DPA involved, this process will take months.
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoThat's actually a good (if slow) solution, given that payment processing is important enough to hit the filter (significant recourse or something).
- justinzollars 6y agoThe financial reforms following 9-11, introduced reporting requirements. This could be under this umbrella? One example is suspicious deposits must be reported by those in the financial services industry to the federal government. Once reported your broker is prohibited by law from informing you of the report. We lost a lot of financial freedom following 911. Paypal is just following US law.
- classics2 6y agoWait until they ban you for life for a similarly random reason, then tell you “it cannot be appealed” lol.