Topic: Censorship resistance is underrated, move to bitcoin and #DeletePaypal (Read 984 times)

Does it really matter, though? Whether PayPal are appointing themselves judge, jury, and executioner here to advanced their own agenda, or whether they are just enforcing rules set by the government, does it make any different to the end user? Does it matter who is censoring your when you are being censored either way? The end result here is identical - some faceless entity is dictating what you are allowed to say, and if you step out of line, they take away your money.

Reminds me stories of businesses such as car manufacturers which, upon discovering a possibly fatal flaw in some model they have released, calculate the cost of the recall and weigh that against how many people are likely to die because of this flaw and the cost of the resulting lawsuits. If the recall will be more expensive, then they shrug their shoulders and let people die.

Quoting from the article you linked:


I bolded the text I really think matters. They don't give a crap about anything but making money. That is the objective of a services business, they don't make widgets or anything else so there is no way to generate more money by making more widgets. They move and hold money.

The second there is work involved that regulators want, you need to pay people to do it. So make sure there as little as possible for regulators to want your people to do.
Is it fair to all users? Nope
Will they loose more business then they gain because of it? Possibly.
Did the accountants & lawyers and everyone else say that doing it this way was the way to make more profit? Almost definitely.

-Dave

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise:

And even if for some reason this ridiculous draconian nonsense doesn't bother, consider for a second they outright lied to all their customers saying "Oops, what a silly mistake!" and then slipped it back in when they thought you wouldn't notice.

If you haven't deleted your PayPal account yet, now would be a good time.

Word on Twitter is that after initially removing that $2500 fine for spreading false info, PayPal reinstated it. Well, so much about it being just a mistake as their PR team tried to present it lol. So glad I got rid of my PayPal  account few years ago so I don't have to deal with their bullshit anymore.

edit: found an article about it https://viewfromthewing.com/paypals-objectionable-terms-are-back-2500-fines-for-content-they-dont-like/

As someone who's personally used them for years before, I can attest to that. They've reversed payments, frozen balances (not for days or weeks, for months) even though I repeatedly KYC and verify whatever they ask for. Not once have I ever been tagged for fraud, all invoices were clearly from freelance work. And yes, they will draw from linked accounts and cards.

Last time I used them to receive was in 2017, mind you. It's probably a lot worse now.


Oh damn, now you made me fall for that too as I told my kid about it and he was like, "really?" and I said really. See, even we can get influenced too easily now. We should be worried.

Good luck with that...

My understanding is accepting PayPal is always a risk, since it is trivial for the buyer to initiate a chargeback. It's for this reason that good DEXs such as Bisq don't support PayPal as a payment option.

It makes no difference. Have a look at the quotes from their User Agreement I shared in this post. If they want to seize your money or reverse a payment, they will take it from your PayPal balance. If your PayPal balance is empty, they will pull it from any of your linked payment methods, including bank accounts or credit cards. If they still can't take your money, they'll send debt collectors after you. Whether or not the money is in your PayPal account is irrelevant. If you use PayPal at all, they can unilaterally decide to take your money.

when doing the "we wil send you 2 payments of under $1 to verify your bank account" you are agreeing to let them link and access your bank account

the thing is...
people need to be more risk aware. and learn about what they are getting into. rather then having a blind ignorant mindsete of trusting.. they need to do research and be self aware.

bitcoin is about people taking responsibility of their own property/value. where you should not just blindly trust some third party to look after it and not harm you.

we should have not celebrated the "currency" mainstreaming but instead looked at the ramifications of redefining bitcoin as a mainstream currency. as yes it had negative ramifications to peoples beloved "privacy rights"

putting bitcoin into a custodian is also something people need to be aware of.
its the whole point of "not your keys not your coin" its about understanding that businesses can fail you.

dont cry that they can fail you. learn that they can and probably will.. and if you dont like it. use something else or make something else but no matter what you decide to use. dont just have the ignorant mindset of utopian hope that the new thing you found is perfect. and instead learn about its risks and flaws and understand them

I try to avoid PayPal as much as possible, but I am not sure if I could actually delete my PayPal account. My main concern is that PayPal is so closely connected with ebay and the small advertisements sites. My preferred payment methods would be cryptos, cash or a bank transfer. But whenever I get contacted by a potential buyer they also ask for PayPal. It's annoying how dominant they are in the market. And now with all the changes to their services it becomes a huge risk for anybody dealing larger sums of money through them. I would advice everybody to move all his money away from PayPal as soon as it arrives, don't let anything sit there for a few days. I wonder how many reports are enough to freeze your account and give you a hefty fine. Imagine you get a false report and did nothing wrong to still face to pay a big fine. The new system sounds exploitable and not save at all.

Ik that. My point being: we don’t need to sit here and intellectually defend continuous wrongdoings for them, just because a corrupt, inefficient, lagging behind and unjust entity didn’t tell them yet, that they can’t live out their authoritarian fetishes on their users without punishment.

What the government legislates doesn’t make things right or wrong, it just decides about it’s legal status. Doing wrongdoings just because they’re legal or mandated doesn’t make them right or justified. It was probably the cause of most human suffering in history, so it should be resisted as best as possible.

Ik that it won’t happen in practice, but i also won’t sit here and defend wrongdoings just because they’re legal. Censorship resistance starts with our tolerance to bs, this is one thing i won’t ever get stoical about.


Nice quote. Im still unsure whether we’re only a minority that opposes tyranny and a large portion of people would actually enjoy being able to legally tyrannise their peers without consequences. I dont think franky is one of them, but he bases part of his judgment strictly on legal frameworks, which are flawed in itself. It’s enough to navigate life, but wrong on many ends like tolerating this bs.


Already on it, thanks. There isn’t much of value in this thread except lies and insults, so i won’t even comment on them.

oeleo. blackhat, tademichi.. the usual culprits of censorship
your little club defended cores main dev employers business property rights (blockstreams products) which were pushed into core roadmap plan) to do the mandatory split.  where anyone opposing blockstreams product push into cores roadmap were treated not as just bitcoiners that reject a bip. but instead treated as complete opposition/enemies to all of bitcoin..

your lil gang even made a topic trying to to get me banned because i dont stop trying to remind people of that corporate push

so stop playing censorship victim when you are highly censorship instigators. yep your group are also the main 12 preachers of saying the same echo'd scripts of denying bitcoin access to billions of people with your ignorant and narrow minded  recited speaches of "bitcoin shouldnt be used for coffee purchases" which in your narrow minds dont realise is the spending amount of 1 billion 3rd world countries weekly wage (yep $3 is a weeks wage for billion people who you decided should not be using bitcoin)

so instead o crying/playing victim. and then shouting some unresearched conspiracy theory that lacks basic knowledge of facts, data and how the world actually works, EG that a fiat business is using its legal rights on its guests...
.. realise what those rights are.. realise how its able to have those rights, and then instead of cry about it.. use it

instead of playing victim that it uses its rights.. instead grow a conscience, some morals. and think of (for once) offering a service that competes against the service you hate. that actually morally and ethically offers something better for everyone

---

its not about me defending "survellaience state" (because i dont))
its about me not being a drugged up paranoid idiot (because i dont do drugs)
its about me being a sober person that has done the research to know what the laws/rights/rules are to understand the rights rules and laws are..

put simply.. i have been involved in bitcoin since 2012. i have a larger hoard then your motley crew put together. and while you cry about privacy of your small illicit activities.. guess what. you cannot find my stash of coins, i dont advertise businesses that cause red flags of surveillance(unlike you lot) and i know how to be risk adverse and protect my property

knowledge is power

you dont have to side with something just because you know how it works

its not about me siding with "gov"/"them". because get this.. i do not side with the globalist elite of corporate greed and control

you can play ignorant and the name call and try to pigeon hole me as "enemy" to anything you want to promote all you like.
but just do the research

stop shouting "government surveillance" when the reality is there is no government department watching everything..
realise the REALITY. its BUSINESSES that are delegated to keep records on their customers.

the foolish thing is you want to cry that businesses are using their laws against customers and so want to then lobby governments to then regulate businesses and destroy the fundamental principles of property rights..


when you learn how the real world works. you can learn the real targets to avoid. and then learn the knowledge you need to then defend your property better by using some of the rights that you are crying are being used against you

so please do some research
then you can learn to offer solutions that work around the real threats

---

while you idiots created paranoid anti-gov conspiracies to then want to brutilise bitcoin as your silly foolish "solution" for your own personal greed without thinking of the ramifications..

learn whats really happening. learn who to actually target/avoid. such as CEX/mixers/buggy flawed subnetworks over promised and over promoted as utopian "top" next gen shit

bitcoin was created to be something different to fiat rules.
yep fiat is a property of central banks and central banks are a business. as are the SEC and the CFTC they are businesses too set up to makage things. LEARN THIS SHIT

stop advertising companies/ broken networks and crying about other companies. stop calling bitcoin broke and censoring bitcoin with your foolish tin foil stories
yes
governments have gained a footing into jurisdictions that then allow businesses to not treat bitcoin as a property of people but as a currency which puts it in the realm of laws that restrict privacy

yep again i need to remind you since the 2014 inception of mainstream definition of bitcoin as a currency. the ramifications of that is that bitcoin is  no longer 100% protected by its own property laws. but instead weakened those rights by now being a currency.. because once you put currency into a businesses hands. its their property, along with you giving them your personal info and bank account numbers allowing them access.. meaning dues to currency laws of bank secrecy act (bank being a business)  privacy has be  redefined.
businesses can monitor things more.
this is not a bitcoin fault/flaw.. its about being defined as a currency instead of a property


so stop trying to brutilise bitcoin to work around the currency laws. by defining bitcoin as useless for accountable property ownership. (you wanting to destroy the provenance/accounting system of bitcoin) and shift people to other networks
stop saying bitcoin is not fit due to your ignorance of whats actually occurring..
stop crying that property rights should not exist

and instead realise we should actually be USING property rights to defend bitcoin against the silly rules of other businesses trying to get their finger into bitcoin

if all you want to do is cry about a business using its property rights. while playing ignorant that you dont know or understand property rights and want to say lets avoid or try to lobby to destroy property rights.. just take a step back. learn something.. and then
USE THE rights. not fight them

oh and if you want to play ignorant and just turn this into a opportunity to respond about your lack of knowledge of property rights to say i must be wrong due to baseball bat analogy (something you are hung up on)

realise this.
2 people can enter a room purely for the sole purpose of punching the heck out of each other until one person is knocked out. where there can be thousands of witnesses. and none of them would call the cops about an assault. and none of them would get arrested even if cops turned up..
yep. property owner sets the terms of use of his property that people can enter his property and fight until knocked out and not be a criminal.... its called.. a boxing arena

also its not allowed to drive a unlicenced go-kart on county/country/main roads.. its not legal to shoot a gun in public

yet there are shooting ranges and go-kart circuits on private land..

uber found ways to set up a business to compete against the taxi regulations..

so think beyond your cries of playing victim that paypal might hurt you. and instead think beyond your tears and find solution
but just be sure your solutions dont have flaws, bugs or ways to rip people off.. in short try something different

This is silly, because PayPal is favoring the customers greatly and is imho unfair against the merchants, so the merchants should be pretty eager for a change; actually should have been long ago already.


Ow too bad. (I'm now embarrassed I've fallen for this so easy.)

That's why we need education. There's a superior alternative now more, there's no need for PayPal. But, if merchants don't recognize the benefits for both themselves and the customers, they're not going to see an alternative. Just like prior 2009, when third parties for electronic transactions were necessary, they still are for some if they don't acknowledge they aren't needed.

I do too, but unfortunately it was a photoshop. 

That's correct. Still, their platform, their rules. This is what people seems to fall to understand: the companies are not forced to have nice and correct rules. Of course, the users are not forced to remain there.


LOL, well said! It's called "shooting themselves in the foot"
I just love Kanye West's newest hat

You guys can continue to argue about what paypal does or doesn't do, you can find them right or wrong, but that doesn't change the main topic. If you use crypto, there is none of this, it’s all on both parties to have an agreement.

If one side scams the other, then the scammer did their job better than the person who got scammed, do not get scammed if you can, but do not put your entire life and economy in the hands of paypal just because you do not want to get scammed, which is also another way of you could get scammed because even with paypal there are scammers. So, I have to say that the best thing is still crypto, gives 100% control, you just need to be careful.

I have pointed this out to franky1 multiple times before, as he defends mass surveillance and government intrusion, while saying that nobody should use mixers or other privacy tools.

I'll repeat the quote I shared in that post above:

franky1 epitomizes this mindset. "PayPal are free to censor anyone who uses PayPal, they are just protecting their business", he says. Even if you think that is a reasonable position to hold, you really think it will stop there? Given the history of government repression, mass surveillance, censorship through the fiat system, social credit scores, and all manner of controlling measures being forced upon us, you really think this isn't just the next step in ever more censorship and control over your lives? Governments would force fiat institutions to freeze all your accounts if you say something they don't like if they thought they could get away with it, and indeed, have already done exactly that with the Canadian truckers, Russian oligarchs, and others. If PayPal had got away with this (and I am still 100% sure they will re-implement it at some point in the future), then they will soon move on to ever more repressive policies.

Agreed. I shiver with some enjoyment each time I see PayPal or some other guy bending the knee to a cause not even worthy. Not that I'm a fan of anyone called celebrity but also really enjoyed reading JPMorgan cutting off Kanye West for Tweets (but of course still running Epstein's).

I know it ain't fun for people who rely on it, but as a person who relied on PP most of my freelancing life, if they didn't mess with me the way they did, I'd never have looked for an alternative, and wouldn't have found Bitcoin until much later (and may never have been prompted to use).

Nice theory, but:
And there was reports that it even happened to people who donated before the "Emergencies" Act was in place, retroactively. Then its a question of who to trust more, the people/ institutions responsible for repeated tyranny, that have an incentive to lie and are caught lying to the public 24/7 - or people who stood up against years of tyranny that was based on proveable misinformation.

It just has nothing to do with abuse, misinformation or scammy promoters profiting, none of these actions were taken because of this. There are ∞ counterexamples.
 
Any of these institutions and the dumber/ or corrupt part of the population will comply with tyranny no matter what nowadays, that is the real problem. They will break/ abuse all rules and policies the moment it is convenient to them. Idk where you still take your trust from that any of these policies will only be used for legitimate reasons, reality actually proves the opposite. It doesnt make sense to repeatedly refer to rules/ laws/ regulations/ policies when the only thing they do in practice is to protect offenders and are used to attack victims, basically giving anarchy to big property holders(as you like to call them) and everyone else having to live under the strictest most snowflake rules with no possibility to even defend themselves in practice.

Saw this the other day, had to share it. I sure hope people watched this cult classic and I never thought (at least not back in 1993-1994) that world depicted in Demolition Man will start becoming reality.

Just some more PayPal censorship: https://hongkongfp.com/2022/10/12/paypal-hk-halts-payments-to-hong-kong-pro-democracy-group-citing-unspecified-excessive-risks/

Censoring any donations to a Hong Kong pro-democracy group due to "excessive risks", but at no point tells anyone, including the group themselves, what those "excessive risks" are. Sounds like China are in charge of PayPal company policy now.

Great to see more and more fiat companies shoot themselves in the foot like this. Can't censor donations with bitcoin!

but paypal are not fining people for things unrelated to paypal services

paypal are not the arbiters of truth of the world outside of paypal services/related companies

its policy was about if you scam people with horseshit, snake oil, false information.. EG false advertising goods on ebay(a paypal company) or you set up some scam where you ask users to pay you via paypal. then expect to be punished if that policy was in place
..
they are not arbiters of truth of the whole world outside of paypal services. dont be an idiot. you sound like a drugged up paranoid idiot

do your research. learn how the real world works
if you fear being charged a penalty by paypal for being a horseshit salesmen..
a. dont use paypal to sell your horseshit
b. set up your own payment system business that has no horseshit penalty clause
c. stop being a horseshit salesman

take this example.
you say alot of horseshit on this forum. (mostly just echo's of horseshit said by your pals without you even thinking or learning if its correct)
 but you do not sell that horseshit via paypal. but just said horseshit.  they wont penanlise you for saying crap here. because your not using their service to do it

however if you did try selling horseshit on this forum via paypal and their policy was in place. then expect to get penalised
LEARN THE DIFFERENCE!!!

sober up, get therapy for your paranoia, take off that tin foil hat.. and stop echo chamber repeating crap your buddies think.. then decide one day to actually learn how the real world works.

paypal is not censoring the world, its just defending its property from its users ABUSING paypal

lets take an example mentioned in this topic
the freedom convoy.

learn this.. and do your research outside and apart from your buddies opinions
the truckers of the convoy had a reason for their protest.*
however separate from this were a bunch of known scammy anti-gov conspiracy/lying idiots profiting from the event via some misinformation and some other scammy games.

*i personally would have loved to directly pay the truckers for their plight, to cover their costs of living expenses losses for doing their protest. but i refused to pay the promoters who had other idea's in mind

if you learn more about the promoters asking for donations. and you learn about their abuse and misinformation. you will learn why the donations were seized and accounts frozen.. big hint.. its not about the same reasons as the truck drivers plight

---

now here is the big picture
read the topic title
if you dont like paypals policy. dont use paypal

instead be creative and create a service on bitcoin that offers the services paypal does. but without the paypal policies

learn how to get around the "currency" laws which CFTC/SEC and FATF impose.
be creative and set up something new.

remember paypal is a business not a currency
bitcoin is a currency not a business

if you want a paypal-esque service/business but without the paypal policy.. create it

You are the one introducing analogies which are completely missing the point.

Again, I'm not arguing that a private company cannot make rules about how you interact with that private company. Of course they can. What I'm saying is that PayPal appointing themselves the sole arbiters of truth, and fining users money that has nothing to do with PayPal is horseshit. If you have no problem with some faceless stranger seizing your assets because you said something they don't like, then again I don't really know what to say. I hear North Korea is nice this time of year? You're gonna go wild for CBDCs?

All your usual ranting about Lightning and mixers is entirely irrelevant and entirely off topic, so I will not derail this thread by debunking your nonsense for the n^th +1 time.

@o_e_l_e_o
you are missing the entire point
especially when you ignored the context to only knit pic a analogy about a baseball bat. rather then realise the point is about the property owner having the right to defend his property

the point is learn about things like property rights.
instead of crying about how businesses use their rights to set rules on their property which is their freedom. dont cry about their freedom. instead if you and your crew of idiots are so cry baby about how the fiat system know their rights about property they own.. learn the same rights and rules so that you can offer something that competes.

you and your crew have been for a while now trying to get people to use mixers without realising that mixers will cause more surveillance. you have been crying about how businesses have KYC/AML .. and then you go about and cry that bitcoin is broke to advertise another network that again actually gets people highlighted more..

so instead of saying that businesses and people should not have any property rights to defend their property.. instead wake up and realise that people and businesses should have rights to do as they please and set their own rules.. and then set up services that actually fulfill your wishes

property rights are a stronger defence for your "privacy" than the currency laws of finance. do not expect privacy under items that are deemed as currency. learn the difference between property and currency laws/policy/rights. learn how to defend yourself and learn how to set things up that actually do help people. rather then the games you have been playing

if there is a business that has terms you dont like.. find one that doest. if you cant find one. make one

if you just want to cry that bitcoin should be bastardised more to become more private by destroying its accounting system and provenance of all utxo's back to their mined coinbase. jsut so you can avoid businesses tracking you..  then you are not helping bitcoin have a "good money" system. you are destroying bitcoin whole purpose of good money. and not solving the big picture

if you want to limit bitcoin to not be fit for 1 billion unbaked 3rd world people by your silly "not for coffee" rhetoric you are nto helping bitcoin. your instead trying to limit and set sully political/social rules on bitcoin with your campaigns.
and if you are now crying about how people should not be able to control how their own property is managed. you again are destroying all the freedoms that you have pretended to want

so instead of thinking your crew should go on some silly campaign to get businesses to stop defending their own property
by trying to lobby that businesses and people should not have property rights

instead learn about and use those property rights and be creative to build something better

what you need to realise is a term called capitalism.. where big business know their property rights and common people dont. which then puts big business in more power

if you learn about property rights you can defend yourself better against the big businesses you hate. or create a second option which people can use instead of it

however
as soon as you start campaigning that people and businesses should not have the right to set terms on their own property. you are destroying freedoms

oh and no dont even bother trying to knit pick some snippet of an analogy to avoid the context to avoid understanding the context/point

..
here is the funny thing. by saying paypal should not be able to set membership rules of its property your are actually calling for to have regulators and law makers to jump in and prevent/destroy freedoms/property rights
have a long and hard think about that

the simple answer is not to lobby or cry about business terms of their property.. but instead realise they have those rights.. and simple learn to read their terms and if you dont like them. dont use that business

dont hate property rights. dont try crying that property rights are bad. instead learn about property rights and use them for your own benefit

emphasis
learn and use property rights to your own benefit

As much as I would prefer to only use bitcoin, I use a bank account and keep fiat in it. However, I have never and will never own a single dollar worth of a stablecoin. By holding a stablecoin, you are accepting all the risks of the underlying fiat (inflation, seizure, censorship, etc.), while also accepting all the additional risks of the stablecoin on top (hacks, scams, seizure, censorship, bankruptcy, etc.) You are trusting twice as many third parties for essentially no benefit.

Most countries don't allow you to murder someone for calling your wife a bad name, and if you think this is acceptable behavior, I don't really know what to say.

I have no need to set up a competitor to PayPal which is trustless and censorship resistant - we already have bitcoin. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop pointing out how terrible PayPal are.

I'm getting a little off-topic, but my point was that people don't get woke in red (Republican) states.

but thats the point though
its what you got to learn

its their property..

instead of crying that if you done something in your neighbours property which they decided was bad, where they decide a baseball bat is the solution to defend themselves.. dont cry about it.

yes you may think having your skull crushed is a bit harsh for just telling the property owner that ihis wife is a fat slut.. but his house rules are his right

realise and learn and research property rights. and then build your own house with your own rules(or lack of) where you can freely invite people into your property without fear of punishment
...
..
welcome to the invention called bitcoin.. people realised fiat services were bad because fiat businesses had their rules. its friggen wrote in the genesis block, one of the reasons bitcoin was invented for to offer a services that is different to the normal banking business rules..

bitcoin was invented to be a new system without a property owner of the network(until core turned up mandating changes) where the rules were simple and not requiring ID/location data. whereby people could transact between each other without worries.

yes businesses started to join at the edges of the network. including withing the developer community.. but you are not forced to use those businesses. (which is why altcoins/subnets started popping up)
but speaking just about the financial businesses, if you dont like those businesses rules for their property. dont use them. instead learn about property rights and create your own services that offer something different

this community doesnt need to have idiot crybabies crying about the businesses around bitcoin that have their own rules which is their right. instead the community needs creative people to create completely new services that dont have those rules

so instead of crying about how businesses property rights might harm your use of their business.. think about setting up your own services that do not harm you or your users

you can learn alot if you do research
EG do you know why scammers ask victims to buy giftcards like itunes vouchers and facebook credits.. its because those credits are not "currency" (something bitcoin lost when it became a currency in ~2014

so make a service that accepts 'tokens'/credits where you refuse to consider them as currency and instead define/describe them as asset property or credits that are not deemed as currency. and then use that to convert over. and you can skip the certain regulations
also things like currency swap services that are described as privacy enhancing... learn to create not currency services. but property services. where its not advertised as privacy enhancing. but instead by default just doesnt log personal details

do research and learn stuff
eg how do you think uber got around the taxicab licencing regulations
be creative and research stuff

oh and as for your favoured alt network.. yes it has flaws and bugs, but its already fallen into the currency regulations due to lack of many things.. so just call it a failed experiment.
start afresh with a new network hybrid with a new mechanism and without all the bugs and flaws. define it differently.. then with certain research you might finally have the niche service network that could actually have utility for your wishes

go discuss it with your chums, and think about solutions not just keep playing the same victim card while trying to promote something thats broke before it even got popular or cry about popular things that are limiting your use of due to rules imposed on it

Paypal with the free will chargeback was the reason they ended up getting worse and worse. I understand that it was there to prevent scam, and it makes sense if there is a proof as well. But with the current way it is, there was a good possibility that people would use it for scam instead, they would be able to buy something and then we would be seeing them do a chargeback, and that would result with a horrible loss for the seller.

Before chargeback it was scammers posing as sellers, after chargeback it was scammers posing as buyers but it’s still bad. I had so many friends who sold stuff, and got chargeback, and it was harder to recover from there and even caused the bankruptcy of some startups.

Yes, there is. Well, first of all, besides this meager interest rate the banks nowadays offer, Tether doesn't have a banking license, because it isn't a bank (or it isn't run as a bank, anyway). That being said, holding your money in Tether means you trust some unlicensed company to handle the credit of billions of dollars, without bankruptcy and liquidity problems. On the other hand of course, you can transfer USDT theoretically anonymously, in comparison with the bank, wherein every transaction is identified.

Crypto is not decentralized, that is a misconception, there are quite a lot of centralized cryptocurrencies that are just like the traditional system, with a central body controlling the affairs of the coin, and you know what happens when a user of that coin does something that they do not like: censorship, confiscation, blacklisting, coin freeze, and so many more; it is Bitcoin that is decentralized and allows you complete control and freedom of your money.
If they want to avoid volatility for inflation, then maybe they should prolly stick with traditional fiat system rather than stablecoins, both are centralized and do not give you control of your funds. There is no difference between hodling your money in your bank account or in stablecoins.

Lol. PayPal is a shitcoin.

Bad habit, I want to believe. Cryptocurrencies are newborn money in comparison with the traditional monetary system, that is alive for over a century. Plus, most cryptocurrencies are scams, and might disincentivize vendors from adoption of bitcoin (as it's seen as a "common crypto"). Journalists do some work here.

How's TerraUSD doing? 

Transaction costs might be near zero with "stablecoins", but there are other, inherited risks. But, to return on-topic: censorship resistance is not an inherited benefit. There's no doubt that the single entity that controls the currency (e.g., Tether) won't start blacklisting certain addresses at some point. In fact, it has happened in the past: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tether-blacklisted-39-ethereum-addresses-144546028.html

Well, that is something I don't understand. Why do people continue using Paypal services paying absurd fees and being bullied while they could simply adopt crypto which is decentralized and let us have total control over our money and transactions?

That sounds like sadomasochism to me.

And even if customers justify they want to avoid the volatility of crypto market's currencies, they could use stablecoins in this case.

He's a sneaky guy:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-03/ray-dalio-no-longer-thinks-cash-is-trash

Sell your BTC for cheap, he wants moar.

This minute PP is down 6.3% and falling as expected.

A week or so ago Ray Dalio who I respect very much came out with PP as a good growth opportunity.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/12-best-growth-stocks-buy-191841097.html

Hmmm..  Tank the stock out, buy in and when the sheep in mass forget and use PP because of limited options the stock goes up...

Goes against my fiber, but hey. maybe make some money.

No, it hasn't. Private companies don't act in a paternalistic manner to protect their users from misinformation with minimum to zero protection demand, last time I checked. What users do with their life, is their business. Not PayPal's. Paypal's business is to work as an online payment system, and serve transactions between vendors and customers. That's all. It's not a law instrument responsible for the society's welfare, and neither users' mom and dad.

What do you mean?

Not entirely true. The vaccine is manufactured exclusively in Texas. 

There is still something called principles and morals that goes beyond what some army of state servants are spamming into a book, for a lot of people. The judicial system became to justice, what fiat became to money. Nothing of what youre saying turns wrong into right, and no amount of missing the point examples will change that.

Comparing rape, vandalism and trespassing with your payment provider opening up the possibility to surveil/sanction/cancel their whole userbase at their own discretion, based on as vague as possible walls of user agreements that can change every 2 seconds and for things that are possibly completely unrelated to the service. Completely missing the point.

They cant. Many policies are void if they violate certain rules, like unreasonably disadvantaging a contracting party. But this will also vary by jurisdiction or court. Regular people just dont have the time to sue any service theyre using or even reading that bs.

No one demanded this.

Thanks for the interesting information.

We should, but its hard to create services that protect common sense rights in a growingly surveillance-mandating, anti-freedom and pro-censorship culture and jurisdiction. There isnt a need for decentralization for no reason.

I'm not arguing that what they are proposing is illegal, just that it's complete horseshit. If their terms say they can put you in debt if you say something they don't like, and you continue to use their service, then sure, you can't act surprised when that's what happens. Doesn't mean it is any less horseshit that a private company are now policing what you say based on their own arbitrary decisions with zero oversight and will take your money away if you step out of line.

This is the future of fiat and CBDCs. It is terrifying. The American Social Credit System is in the works. Mass surveillance becomes a whole lot more problematic when private companies or governments can just take away your money if you commit thoughtcrime. There will never be a greater need for bitcoin.

That's why I don't trust him. He allowed Twitter to become a woke hivemind.

His transformation from 2010 to 2020 is amazing (in a bad way).

Why does everyone in Commiefornia catch the woke virus?

And there's no "vaccine" apparently...

It's going to be real interesting to watch PP stock price this week.

Jack Dorsey and Block are probably the closest ones to strike PP. He still leans in to the left/woke crowd tho.

Jack Mallers, maybe if he can get some big HP behind him. He could be a disruptor in the field.

Poor Ebay, they pretty much run on PP.

heres the think though.. they can

by linking your bank account you are giving them permission to pull funds from your account.

you have to check their terms for what they deem as reasons they will pull funds from your account

EG some companies say they want to charge you a monthly fee or a retainer amount or a upfront reserve. you ned to read the terms for what they say they will do if you use their service

lets give you some other real life examples
heck even just parking your car on a rectangle space of tarmac for longer than the land owner allows, gets your vehicle towed away and debt collectors chasing you. and thats without even having to sign up to any membership. thats just being on someones property means you agree to their terms of use
much like many websites 'by continuing to visit this site you agree with its cookie policy and the sites terms and conditions'
.you see facebook, microsoft outlook, and paypal update there terms, they dont even have to get you to 'accept' them no more, they simply state by continuing to use their service you are agreeing to the updated terms. meaning they dont even have to get you to read and accept you have read the updated terms.

this is why whenever using any service, read the terms and if you dont like it, dont use the service.

heck you even see utility companies. like cell phone deals that set you up with a contract. which meant to be a fixed rate zero change policy for the contract period, now can change their rates/policies mid contract where they dont even have to get you to sign up again. they can just start taking more money out of your account or any amount they say the bill is owed.

But in this case, it isn't their property. PayPal are absolutely within their rights to shut down your account if you said something they don't like. That's how centralized businesses work. Fine. What they aren't within their rights to do is pull $2,500 from a completely separate bank account or send debt collectors after you because you said something they don't like. That is absolutely not their property.

This policy was no mistake or accident. This is the future direction PayPal are heading in. They may have put it on hold for now, but you can guarantee they will reintroduce it again at some point, once the outrage has passed.

Which they've already been doing (and over-zealously, it seems, given how many innocent users have lost funds on PayPal). This new policy isn't about that - it's about censorship and control.

---

I'm actually feeling positive about this new policy from PayPal. It doesn't affect me in the slightest since I have never had a PayPal account, and the more people whom fiat institutes start arbitrarily censoring, fining, and preventing access to their own money, then the more people who will start looking for a trustless, censorship resistant alternative.

Bitcoin fixes this.

Thanks for this, Paypal seems to be more stricter and don't care anything with freedom to speak.

For freelancers who need to receipt worldwide online payment, I think it's better to choose the other alternative e.g. World Pay, Sage Pay, Stripe etc since most people doesn't comfortable to pay via Bitcoin. Even though sooner or later those online payment might tightening their rules, but there's not many choice against this matter.

I think the problem in this thread isn't about Paypal protecting itself or its users from financial crimes, i mean, every user on this forum will be happy if proven criminals have their funds confiscated and if they are censored by Paypal, but most of the problem here is some of the reasons as to why a Paypal user can get censored and their funds confiscated, some of which are really subjective reasons, like misinformation, unfit for publication, or harmful, etc, some of these things are subjective and for example what some of their users might consider good information, might be misinformation in Paypal's views, and they could get punished for it, even through their linked bank accounts. (Well that's before they changed their minds on this unnecessary terms of service anyway).
That is the responsibility people owe to their funds when they are users in the Bitcoin network.

I do like centralization and the misuse of that power, but if the correct procedures were followed and the funds "locked" until the criminal actions were proven, then I will welcome actions to prevent scams and financial crimes. I know this is open for exploitation and misuse, but large companies like PayPal has an obligation to protect their users from financial crimes.

The thing about Bitcoin is this.... once you press the enter key to transfer the funds, it is gone... you cannot reverse that transaction...and this is advantageous for companies and individuals, where people buy something and then reverse the transaction... but on the other hand... if the receiver is a scammer and you want to reverse the transaction.... then that is impossible. 

I'm afraid Paypal isn't becoming obsolete, like you say, maybe for you because you prolly no longer use it, but mind you that Paypal has over 400 million users and still counting, thus it is pretty far from being obsolete. Bitcoin is perfect as a way to send and receive funds without censorship, that's if the user makes use of non-custodial wallets, but Bitcoin imo is still a rather young network and cannot make Paypal obsolete just yet. Even if people ditch Paypal for one obscene reason or the other, only a few of them will join the Bitcoin network as an alternative, they'd rather choose other 'popular' options to send and receive funds.

Having said that, Bitcoin's adoption will continually grow and users who prefer censorship resistant options will join the Bitcoin network, but i am afraid that users who worry about them being censored are fewer than those that do not.

Paypal was going down the shithole years ago. Even the fact that they "kinda" adopted Bitcoin won't change their true nature.
Unfortunately most of the Paypal customers don't care about there Terms of Service, because:
1.Paypal is simply too user-friendly and convenient, if you are a buyer.
2.The online sellers use Paypal only because millions of buyers use it as well.
This company is in the "too big to fail" category despite their transaction fees going up and their service getting worse every year.
The Paypal alternatives like Skrill, Zelle, Cashapp and the rest of the payment apps will turn into Paypal clones sooner or later.
When you use such payment service and you fund your account, your money becomes their money and you have to abide by the their rules.
Otherwise they will simply take away the money that you gave them.

This is another very good example of how many organizations have been scared shitless about bitcoin ever since it was created. Bitcoin simply cuts off their hand that was in other people's pockets. No wonder they have been spreading so much FUD and spending so much money trying to prevent bitcoin adoption from growing and overtaking their corrupt cartels.

I think PayPal isn't doing it at their own will. Because such kind of confistication activities can seriously harm the reputation of PayPal as a business. It surely can bring in negative press releases against them which can hurt them as a business.

I believe they are being pressurized by some regulatory bodies where they are headquartered. Because as a privately held company, they can't decide such things and cancel your account at their will. This is my personal take on it.

Just make sure to always immediately withdraw your PayPal funds to your bank account every few days. Even before this new(but seemingly revoked) rule, PayPal locking up funds and taking people's money isn't anything new — and I'm saying this as someone who lost approximately $2000 to PayPal as well; and I didn't even scam anyone.

I am glad they have removed that clause because of the negative response from people and the controversy generated. Many people believe that censorship is acceptable nowadays, but that a private company could act in that way has a component of arbitrariness that is closer to feudalism than to an advanced society.

Who decides what is correct information? If we talk about things like that the earth is round we will enter into a consensus, and even so, there are those who deny it and say that it is flat, but when we enter into topics that have an ideological component we enter into dangerous terrain.

For example. When CBDCs are soon to be implemented, expressing the opinion that Bitcoin is more reliable and more secure than them could be considered misinformation. And so we could find a lot of examples.

I used paypal a bit in the past and stopped using it by deleting the account, because of some charges they wanted to put if I remember correctly. Now I have them sending me emails saying they will give me some free pennies if I come back. Let them sit tight.

For me Paypal has always been a very treacherous company which charge abusive fees while not being user friendly, especially for micro earners who want to work online on multiple platforms.

These news come only to corroborate with my initial thoughts. I'm just thankful we have cryptocurrency and more exactly bitcoin nowadays, so Paypal has become obsolete since then, at least in my case.

And I believe it is just a matter of time until they close the doors or are bought by a rising company of the same niche.

but come on !!! you must know by now
fiat is not users product but the property of government. they make it they own it they set the rules for who gets to use it for whatever reason

paypal services/accounts/utility like all businesses belongs to paypal. they set the rules because its their property

if someone walked into your house(property) and said they were your guest, and they suddenly started urinating on your sofa and then raping your spouse.. (they may have your warped mindset that you if you were a guest would think that the property owner should be hospitable to its guests and let them have the right to do as they please.)
but the property owner is more likely to get a baseball bat and swing it at your head if you dont leave their property

its not 'suddenly taking the law into their own hands'. its their property  right thats ben around for hundreds of years to set terms and conditions of utility of their guests using their property

if you want to destroy property rights that you are actually in the end harming your own rights about your own property.. so stop crying about services rights to protect what is theirs.

businesses can set any policy they like.. its their property
if you dont like their terms.. dont use them. its simple

you need to start getting used to reading walls of texts to read the terms and conditions. and be prepared to realise that many businesses will have terms that wont meet your expectations. and s you then need to learn to stop using services

no business is expected to by default to let its customers do absolutely anything they like. so stop being an idiot crying that businesses do not let you do your criminal activity without monitoring you

if you want to do criminal activity without monitoring.. then go get your buddy group together and go make a services that has no terms of use
stop crying about how many businesses are not receptive to criminals

oh and here is the funny.. i actually prefer to use alipay (alixpress/alibaba) which is chinese far more then paypal. i have not used paypal in possibly 12 years

but the point is instead of crying about how businesses are harming your immoral/unethical methods of profit.. go make a service that fits your need

Too bad I still need to use Paypal because this is how I get paid for some of my offshore clients. Tried to pitch in an idea that I'm open in receiving my pay in bitcoin or any other altcoins out there but they don't seem too comfortable to handle such transactions. Imagine I just posted something against Paypal out of frustration but not out of spite, and then a $2500 deduction on my account would be posted? This is nuts. This is what happens when an organization is given a lot of power on their hands, they act like they are the law and that everyone is on their payroll.

Wise is a decent alternative, but I'm not sure if it's any better than what Paypal is right now.

Yes. It's true. A private company suddenly decides to take the law in hands, and act as a social penalty mechanism. This can turn into so much worse shit that I don't want to think about. There's no person I know who doesn't have a paypal account. I do have too, but with no linked credit card. It can't overcharge if I use debit.

It's a glimpse from the future, CBDC. 

It'd be shame if he was worthy of respect. He's lost me since Dogecoin.

"If you're not woke/SJW-friendly, you will get a fine from the thought police."

Okay PayPal!

ps: Shame this service was founded by Elon Musk... see how fast things can change in just 2 decades?

The existence of an alternate needs to be spread around. This can shift existing users of PayPal towards bitcoin. In PayPal users have their bank accounts connected to PayPal. The fund received in any currency gets withdrawn to the respective bank account linked. Same as this bitcoin can be used without much complications. For now the market volatility, trust and the awareness keeps bitcoin away from PayPal users who are much oriented on business purposes. These corporate networks make use of it and overruling its userbase.

This is wild. I took a good look through their User Agreement here: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full. I've pulled out all the relevant parts below:


So if PayPal decide you've said something they don't like, they'll charge $2,500 from your PayPal account. If they can't do that, they'll pull $2,500 from any linked banked account or credit card. If they can't do that, they'll send debt collectors after you.

What about this post? This post is harmful to PayPal. Would they charge me $2,500 for it if I had a PayPal account? Who knows. It's within their terms to do so if they wanted, and it's at their sole discretion.

And perhaps because they don't know there's an alternative payment network that cuts off intermediaries, treats everyone objectively, and makes everyone responsible for their own money? Nobody is forcing you to have a bank account, but if you don't know there are other options to send money via the Internet, you'll be left over with 2 options. Option A; to not send money via the Internet, but with physical cash. Option B; to use the bank, in spite of the downsides.

There's no justification to the staying of the current feudalistic monetary system other than inadequate education.

Currently the only alternative to Paypal is directly using a credit or debit card. Bitcoin isn't exactly at the stage required to subvert Paypal, especially when you still need to buy gift cards or debit cards for Bitcoin to purchase most fiat stuff.

Exactly, you are in their house you have to play by their rules. Credit cards and their processors have always been able to and frequently did block things they wanted to or were forced to block. Before there was 'the internet' when we had to dial into BBSs and use compuserve and such they would kick you in a second if you started something the operators did not like. Nobody is forcing you to do anything or even use their services, but because they are cheap & easy & simple people do.

Just as soon as people notice they have no rights of service the better they will be. And that is the point of BTC there is no way for anyone to stop you from using it.

-Dave

What about the small businesses like micro earning sites, survey workers, or freelance workers then? Are they going to boycott them as well if they found that there website is publishing some bad advertisements or may be there was a survey which was connected with the company which PayPal does not like? That's funny because it is too restrictive and is not worth it because PayPal will surely loose big user data base after this. PayPal is already on the negative list of users because there had been lot of chargebacks for the subscriptions of simple play store apps and iOS apps. All you need is one complaint and they will just chargeback without further confirmation. It's really sad to see more stringent rules being enacted by them.

The hypocrisy to these payment system is just too much but they can stomach all these when they see you not on their side. When the Missile mail was launched which allows people to send money to Ukrainian army to write personal message to the bombs to shoot to Russians, the funding page wasn't taken down. They were happy to published on news pages.

Paypal, Gofundme and all others supports to fund wars but funding the truckers protest to express their dismay. The funds were seized.

According the Traders university https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je748RNEnWc

If your paypal account happens to be empty while you are caught spreading misinformation, paypal has the right to get the funds from your linked bank account.  Damn!

So, anything that some unnamed and unknown person at PayPal deems is harmful, misinformation, or just generally unfit for publication, and you are fined and censored. How many people in the traditional banking world still think that promoting bitcoin is spreading misinformation? And you can't say anything that might hurt someone's feelings? Lol. Glad I've never had a PayPal account. What a scam.

Note, of course, that PayPal won't be implementing these kinds of draconian rules for fun. (I know they have reversed course for now due to the backlash, but these rules will absolutely return either when no one is paying attention, or in small increments over time so people don't notice.) It is governments and regulators which are forcing PayPal to implement these kinds of rules. And if they are forcing fiat institutions to do it, you can rest assured they will soon be forcing crypto institutions to do it too.

Bitcoin is censorship resistant, but centralized exchanges absolutely aren't. Bitcoin is the solution to this if and only if you hold your own bitcoin in your wallets.

Well, not only PayPal is a problem. I am hinking about how much censorship resistance will PoS coins such Ethereum will have now.

Owner of the Addresses with huge amount of coins, the validators, are well known. Authorities may just go to those people and make requests.

This cannot  be done in a protocol such as bitcoin pow. Miners are not well know, hash rate is more decentralized  (miners are not polls)

Censorship resistance is unfortunately one of those things that the huge majority of people can only appreciate once they themselves have already been censored in the past. Hence why we always get opinions from privileged people saying things like "PayPal/CashApp/ApplePay is fine, Bitcoin is unnecessary".

"May subject you to damages", "May be debited directly from your Paypal account(s)". This implies that it's absolutely possible. And if something's possible, it will happen. Where did I spread misinformation exactly?

Ok, first of all, it's the $2,500 fine that is no longer existent policy; not the rest. Second, the point of this thread isn't the $2,500 fine.

Exactly. You don't have a right in Paypal. So opt out.

You call it misinformation cause the ToS included 'may' and not a more certain been like 'would'? That seems like a reach imo.

"May" is many atimes used in describing the terms of service that users have to comply to, and agreeing to it means the user understands that the company or firm reserves the right to act on those terms outlisted.

Is it possible that if that term is still up users who are perceived to have violated it would have the set amount deducted from their balance. Yes.
If they do so, can they (PayPal) be sued or challenged for it? No, you agreed to the term.

Well, that's not exactly what it said. It said this:


You're somewhat ironically spreading misinformation about their (now no longer existent) policy though, which is kind of funny.

Don't care about this Toby Young guy, don't care about people who violate a company's policies, get removed as a customer, and then cry about their non-existent right to use said company's services. From one of the articles you linked:



Reminds me of the whole "right to social media" movement. There's no such right. There's also no right to Cloudflare, no right to Uber, no right to Door Dash, and no right to Bitcointalk.

Recently, Paypal announced that they will be charging $2,500 if you're caught to spread "false, inaccurate or misleading information" as they say[1]. It'd be planned to be effective by November 3rd, but they must have realized it does some harm to vaguely and subjectively suspend accounts and confiscate people's money, so they've reversed it according to Dailywire[2]. However, some users do have had their accounts canceled. Specifically, accounts linked to Toby Young[3].

This[4] is the updated list of prohibited activities, taken from web archive. They have removed it from paypal.com, as I said because they must have withdrawn it. This isn't much different from the this year's GoFundMe case, wherein millions of dollars from truckers were seized due to protesting. It might be a common phenomenon from now on, especially with the existence of such ambiguous and subjectively-taken legislation[5]. Let me highlight some:

Leaving savings to your Paypal account means you're fully agreed with having them confiscated if you're caught to do something that might be considered shady or inappropriate, not according to you, but according to Paypal.

Friendly suggestion: Don't. Move to bitcoin. I can't assure you that it will rise or stabilize in value over the long term, but I can tell you this: It doesn't have Terms & Conditions. You're censorship protected.

[1] https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-paypal-policy-lets-company-pull-2500-from-users-accounts-if-they-promote-misinformation
[2] https://www.dailywire.com/news/paypal-reverses-plan-to-fine-users-2500-for-misinformation-after-daily-wire-report
[3] https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/paypal-suspends-toby-youngs-free-speech-union-accounts-over-covid-misinformation-335762/
[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20220927223312/https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/US/en/acceptableuse-full-110322.pdf
[5] https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full?locale.x=en_US#restricted-activities