Soulseek and PayPal: The nightmare continues

[Ortali]

Dear Soulseek users,

We want to preface this by letting you know that we’re eternally grateful for all of the support that you’ve shown us over the years. It’s you that keep us going, both emotionally and through your generous support. You may have been wondering what’s been going on with our donations since February, as you’ve not been able to make any donations through PayPal since that time.

This is the moment where we explain what’s going down between Soulseek and PayPal. We really thought we were done with this shit.

For those of you who have been with us for a while, you may remember the unexplained shut-down of our PayPal account in October of 2015. The gist was that after the 15 years we had been with PayPal, their policy had changed regarding file sharing sites and news groups. Though Soulseek is 100% free, and is ad & spyware free, they told us we needed authorization to continue accepting donations through PayPal. They sent us an extensive “application” form, which we completed. After much obfuscation, they denied our petition for authorization, and told us we could not appeal this decision.

At that point in time, the fabulous Rainey Reitman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped in to help us to revive our PayPal account. She also wrote an article about it, which you can find here:

The Kafkaesque Battle of Soulseek and PayPal, and Why Free Speech Defenders Should be Worried About Payment Networks

PayPal both emailed us and called us to say that they had made a mistake with the denial of authorization. Both Misty (PayPal AUP escalation agent) and Jason Billian (PayPal’s Digital Goods Policy Manager - Brand Risk) told us we were authorized to continue accepting donations through PayPal.

This was Misty’s email:

(full-size image)

Jason and I had a great conversation via phone, where he explained that we were authorized, that PayPal had made a mistake, and not to worry.

Fast forward two years, almost to the day of our reinstatement; upon logging into our PayPal account, we see that our account has been closed, and are provided a link to a page that says that all file-sharing software/sites/apps and news groups require authorization. We couldn’t believe this was happening again!

We immediately called PayPal, and spoke to an AUP agent who told us that looking through the notes on our account, it was clear that we were already authorized. He was confused, and said he would escalate the ticket. A few hours later, we received an email saying that our “appeal had been denied”, even though we were honesty just trying to figure out what the hell was going on. It was the exact same email that we had received two years before.

Yet another phone call was made to PayPal, this time with a hysterical agent who told us we were violating their TOS by being “high risk”, the exact opposite of which was told to us by Jason Billian two years before. Despite my attempts to educate him on the way Soulseek works, he refused to cite which part of PayPal’s TOS had been violated, and was not helpful in any way.

So which was it? We tried to email and phone PayPal in order to find out exactly what rule we had broken, since nothing we were doing had changed. Had their TOS changed? No one would tell us. Additionally, we were not able to access our donation records to file our taxes, and had to file an extension. Being stonewalled again at every turn, we contacted the EFF once more, and Joe Mullin was enlisted to help us navigate this nightmare.

Joe provided us with a contact within PayPal to make an “executive escalation”. We emailed the contact about our situation, and a full month later, we received an email from Mary in Executive Escalations, who told us our account was permanently restricted, that “policy had changed”, but offered no explanation beyond that. No explanation of why we’re high-risk, no explanation of why they went back on their decision after PayPal profusely apologized for doing same thing previously.

She also asked us to give her a call. We did, but never heard back from her.

About a month later, Joe at the EFF acquired another contact number and called PayPal to confront them about the issue. They refused to discuss it with him, explaining that (for some reason, this time) they could not discuss our private account information with a third party.

We sent one last long email to said contact on June 20th, trying to lay out our thoughts,

questions, and positions as comprehensively as we could:

(full-size image)

We’ll update this post if we receive any response, but at this point we’ve very doubtful that we’ll ever hear from them again.

Joe wrote another piece describing our new PayPal nightmare. You can read it here:

Following Copyright Law Should Be Enough—Even When Payment Processors Say it Isn’t

To be clear, we find PayPal’s conduct in this situation incredibly unethical, unprofessional, and shameful. This coming from a company that used to send us Christmas cards, that assigned us account managers with whom we’ve had great working relationships for many years.

If you, as a Soulseek supporter, were in any way inconvenienced by the inability to donate through PayPal, we encourage you to contact them and tell them how you feel. You can contact them here:

https://www.PayPal.com/us/smarthelp/contact-us

There should be call/email links at the bottom of the page. If you’re not seeing them, try selecting ‘I have an issue with: Payments’, then ‘Sending money’, then ‘Can’t make payment’, and the call/email links should appear at the bottom.

As stated in the beginning of this post, we truly love our users and appreciated all of the love you’ve shown Soulseek over the years!

Thanks for hearing us out,

Roz and Nir Arbel

[lovema...@gmail.com]

Hi there, I understand the difficulty of such situation. Though, why don't you change donation platform? There must be other ways, right?

[zai...@gmail.com]

They could use Patreon.

[faircity]

Don't see what the problem with Stripe is ?

[Ortali]

Hi everyone, 

I'm sorry it's taken a while to respond! Things have been really hectic with my desk job, and I haven't gotten a chance to reply until now.

As faircity mentioned, we've been using Stripe as a PayPal alternative for some time now. Stripe is a really wonderful donation platform, but unfortunately you need a credit card to register with them. We understand that having a credit card is not as common in some countries as it is in the US and UK, and because of this, some of our users are excluded from donating. And the fact of the matter is, despite the fact that many people complain about PayPal, folks just really seem to trust the company above all others.

Patreon is a great idea, and something we've been thinking about for a while. We're excited by the idea of it, but we need to think about how to structure Patreon rewards, whether it should be the same as just donating every month, or should there be anything extra, etcetera. 

We've also considered Bitcoin, but it is unstable and less convenient, so we're more lukewarm about it.

[nept...@gmail.com]

Give me an address to send crypto to.

[faircity]

Just click inside soulseek top right corner support. It will bring you to stripe & bitcoin option

[mck...@t-online.de]

so no paypal donations for now? my credit cards will not let me use bitcoin. i got warned 2x about my xfers with bitcoins. maybe other people have better luck. 

[ro...@luminousdigital.org]

Set up shop on another platform and use a crypto currency, and consider adding a service like stripe instead. I can help you out if you want.

[faircity]

Just use stripe. safe & fast

[mck...@t-online.de]

will try today

[mck...@t-online.de]

ok. mistake i made. was i thought i needed to setup a stripe account! i chatted with them. and was told how to donate. super easy. just used my cc. just press on donate as usual folks.and enter the amount you want and cc info. works fine

[hidde...@gmail.com]

Yeah the hell with Paypal. Theyre a very creepy service. After 9 years of being with them, with no problems at all, they demanded a picture of me! I refused because that is some real creepy shit. And they banned my account. I brought it up with the Better Business Bureau, but the BBB couldnt help. So I dont use Paypal anymore. Use another method, and I will help support though there. But I will never give a penny through Paypal.

[hidde...@gmail.com]

Oh yeah, please get off of PayPal. It endangers everyone who uses your service. PayPal is an ultra creepy company. Like really creepy.

[garce...@gmail.com]

Bitcoin is volatile but is a deflationary currency. (USD is inflationary,  devalued himself)

[mvanv...@gmail.com]

I'd still recommend Bitcoin. It may not be super stable, but the trend is rising and you don't have to exchange them for euros to be able to buy things. Even if not using as a primary way to receive donations, just having an address where people can donate to is never a bad idea.

[ian...@gmail.com]

Bitcoin! 

[ldexter...@gmail.com]

http://player.fm/series/syntax-tasty-web-development-treats-1469447/accepting-money-on-the-internet - if they haven't already I believe Stripe are adding debit card support

Hope this is clear/useful

Keep up great work!

Regards

[tak...@gmail.com]

Hi, I tried stripe but mexico is not in their list yet , any other solution?

[Nir Arbel]

Hey!

We're trying to get a Patreon going that works with our privileges activation system. I also did some googling and it looks like Stripe is working on availability in Mexico, there's a link somewhere on their website that will notify you when they get it going.

Cheers, Nir

[firmens...@gmail.com]

if i still had my old eth address i would drop in a few euros

[rgue...@email.cpcc.edu]

I think it's a really bad choice to still be using Paypal after the incident that happened in 2015, you should always have expected that it would happen again and it did! Paypal has been known for many many years as a bad payment processing service and they have no excuse for this kind of behaviour but a long time ago SoulseekQt developers should have opened other means of accepting donations like Bitcoin, Monero, Ethereum, Litecoin, Zcash, etc etc... Why? Why should you accept cryptocurrencies as another means of donations? Basically because of all the problems Paypal has caused you and has caused many other people with frozen and blocked accounts without a reason just because Paypal bots for detecting fraud are broken so i don't think it's up to debate or opinion that you should abandon completely Paypal and other centralized payment processing solutions and instead accept donations through many cryptocurrency wallets but not centralized wallets like Coinbase because that defeats the purpose of leaving Paypal altogether, use decentralized wallets for the creation of the many cryptocurrency Wallets there are and decentralized exchanges for when you need to exchange any of the cryptocurrencies to Fiat currency. Please consider this and leave Paypal completely so hassle like this will not be repeated.

[rgue...@email.cpcc.edu]

You should go and ask questions about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to Bitcoin enthusiasts because Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies seem like the best option but if by "unstable" you mean the Bitcoin prices then that's true but i don't see the problem with it as eventually the price goes up and also the payment processors from the Bitcoin network aren't all unstable so you should do better research and ask experienced users in the Crypto community and also ask Cryptocurrencies specialists.

[rgue...@email.cpcc.edu]

I still think Striped is a bad idea even tho it might be able to be used in Mexico soon because the only user base from SoulSeekQt isn't from Mexico but from all around the world so donations need to be done from a payment processor that doesn't require adding a european or north american credit card. 

[rgue...@email.cpcc.edu]

Also consider the fact that recently Mexico elected a Socialist president and even tho i don't want to get political i have to be realistic and warn about it because i live in a country infested and destroyed by that failed political system that seeks to seize and destroy all means of production and growth for any country called Socialism and that country is Venezuela so in something like 10 years from now Mexico might not have the good (or at least better than Venezuela) economy that it has now and that's something that really needs to be considered and thinking ahead of time when it comes to donations is pretty much needed. Also Stripe doesn't work worldwide with their requirement to use a credit card to register so it's not a good idea. 

[rgue...@email.cpcc.edu]

you can always create a new ETH or BTC address (and please take really good care of it because only you are responsible for security of the wallet) buy some ETH or BTC and then donate it to SoulseekQt

[ldexter...@gmail.com]

Hi,

It's not an either/or issue

Not every country has Stripe and not every person uses cryptocurrency

I think Soulseek's goal here is alternative options, but yes it does appear that transitioning from Paypal ASAP is wise

Regards

[majes...@gmail.com]

I'm a fan of crypto currency, but right now (Dec 2018), who in their right mind would use it? The Bitcoin and ETH currencies are falling through the floor. I've lost nearly 70% of my ETH value since the start of the year, and doubt I'll be putting my money in anytime soon.

[FICT]

I would like to donate to slsk but i don't have cryptocurrency. just wondering if there is another (non paypal) alternative.

[reun...@gmail.com]

Hello

Is your issue with PP resolved ?

[garde...@gmail.com]

I sent PayPal a rather pointed letter regarding this. I've been a business client of PayPal for years for online retail services and I find this whole debacle to be very disturbing on PayPal's behalf. The bottom line is they simply don't care. 

[Ortali]

Hi gardenman13, 

We want to thank you so much for writing to PayPal about us, that's just amazing!  

And you're correct, the bottom line is that they don't care about their clients, or keeping to their word. They don't care about the EFF contacting them, nor major news outlets. Justin Higgs, PayPal's Director of Corporate Communications appears to be making a habit of stonewalling clients, users, advocacy groups, and the press. That said, I suppose if enough enough people put pressure on them, they may change their mind again in the future. 

We really appreciate that you took the time and energy to say something to them. Thanks again! 

[oliver...@gmail.com]

Wishing a great success going forward and thank you as ever for managing to go through all of this. What an amazing platform and community!

Although i must say, i came to this thread because i wanted to report a user who denies permission to download and immediately sends a message upon queuing an album suggesting people pay him.

[19:29:29][StepAhead] my albums are for exchange - here is my wanted list - https://www.discogs.com/wantlist?user=HayaskoSoulFunk  or 10 EUR PAYPAL per album

Not sure what your views are on this - but it was a surprise and rather against anything i've experienced thusfar.

Anyhow, Bless Soulseekers and have a great new year!!

[majes...@gmail.com]

That bloke Step Ahead is one such person that puts up files as exchange only.

I've had run in's with other exchangers previously, including one guy from Bulgaria and Chile.

If he doesn't want to make them available for sharing, then he should remove them offline.

[xcr...@gmail.com]

Hi all,

Don't go on Patreon, they're basically run by PayPall as of now. They are the reason of the whole Patreon debacle/controversy.

These companies have no place for free speech etc.

Please do not use their services in any way.

I've seen that the biggest names from Patreon are now leaving because of what the company has become so maybe you could follow where it leads ? And eventually use the same service later ?

I wish you all the best anyway ! With much love.

[red...@gmail.com]

accept cryptocurrency for donations:

https://globee.com/

[mumpy...@gmail.com]

Bitcoin, Litecoin, & Ethereum payments. Problem solved.

[chris....@gmail.com]

Hi, I would like to donate $$ for your great service but not with my credit card. with paypal as I used before. 

I pay for VPN with paypal, so why not you? Don't get it and I don't have time to read all the mails...sorry

[Keir Hardie]

Maybe just read the first one? PayPal closed their account, they would be happy to still be accepting money via PayPal but PayPal won't allow it.

[cryptogr...@gmail.com]

Come on, FLOOR THESE FUCKERS RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW. TIME TO SHOW THEM WHOS BOSS!!!! CRYPTO!!!!!! CRYPTOOOO KILL THE ELITE

[Keir Hardie]

I know you're very open minded about the pros and cons of cryptocurrency, and not a fanboy or anything. I can tell from your name.

[mails...@gmail.com]

Please just accept Bitcoin BTC donations (again).  This means anyone who has or can buy BTC can donate.  I'd say 99% of people in the world have never heard of Stripe.

I am waiting to give SLSK monies.

[faircity]

Stripe is world wide.....

But now I'm getting card declined  ;-(

[Ortali]

Hey faircity,

What's going on?! What sort of error message have you been getting, and at what part of the donation process?

If you feel better discussing this in private, please email me directly.

I look forward to hearing from you.

[hdsd...@gmail.com]

using pp... i mean... are you use the internet since 2015 or what ? they pull these stunts all the time. freeze accounts, deny money etc. never ever used pay pl since https://www.somethingawful.com/news/paypal-fiasco-summary/

[jele...@gmail.com]

Messaged them! What a despicable piece of shit company! 

[aca...@gmail.com]

hi, i would like to donate to soulseek but i don't have a credit card at the moment so paypal works just fine for me. please can you establish a different

payment method from Stripe?

[gary...@gmail.com]

Hi I wanted to mention that I recently used Stripe to donate to you. I used a prepaid card that I bought with cash at a grocery store, and submitted that to Stripe. To me this is a really nice and relatively safe way,  as even if I didnt trust Stripe my identity and real bank accounts are intact.  Even if I was somehow fraudulently charged they would most likely resolve the issue on VISA,Mastercards side (side note Mastercard has partnered with Google to help track customers purchasing activity: https://globalnews.ca/news/4423814/google-mastercard-secret-deal-privacy/ ) That being said I also like this option because it bypasses giants like Paypal. It would also be awesome to see all soulseek community related things eventually move away from Google as well, who I find to be quite repugnant.

I really appreciate soulseek and I have for a long time. Hopefully more people will donate via Stripe and help reduce the monopolistic nature of the internet in respect to all things, including payment methods. Support alternative and open source options!

[Ortali]

jelesia11 , We really want to thank you for contacting PayPal on our behalf! We know that's not an easy thing to do, and we very much appreciate that you took the time to reach out to them. <3 <3 <3 

garykoers, thanks for letting us know that Stripe has the option of using a pre-paid card. This is something that we weren't aware of, and it makes us feel really good that everyone who wants to may actually have the ability to donate now. It was one of the only drawbacks that we saw to using Stripe, as we understand that credit/debit cards are not a possibility for a number of our users. 

In general, we realize that despite the fact many folks say they dislike PayPal, it really is the most trusted payment processor out there, and many people are reticent to try anything new or different. Thank you for the very kind words, continued support of Soulseek, and for being an adventurous and innovative soul!

[pauljga...@gmail.com]

Yep, what is the bitcoin address ?

[ada...@gmx.ch]

Sad to hear about your bad news. I hope things will go out well. Many thanks for Soulseek and the constant support of it.

Greets!

[MCML...@protonmail.ch]

So drop paypal. 

simple. 

[faircity]

Foook paypal. Stripe is good enough

[amino jack]

I'll fucking donate $1000 if you can fix the time limits in the Rooms, I can't even have a GODDAMN DECENT conversation without being "shadowbanned"

[keat...@gmail.com]

Bitcoin?

[dprap...@gmail.com]

You should use an account not associated with Soulseek, so they will never know. Is that possible?

[mvanv...@gmail.com]

May be create an organization, something called for example Friends of Open Source, that handles donations for different open source projects. Projects that cannot (or do not want to) receive from a service like PayPal directly, could join the Friends.

[mvanv...@gmail.com]

Or what about this?

https://devpost.com/software/donatewise

[israel...@gmail.com]

Dear Roz and Nir Arbel.....can be optionally you use Stripe??

Stripe is arguably PayPal's largest competitor in terms of market share and volume.

Why should you choose it?

    It has powerful integration, works seamlessly with hundreds of third-party applications and services making it incredibly easy to use.
    Payments are processed quickly - a crucial aspect of any business. The money can be in your account in 48 hours.
    Stripe has a global presence, which means that international payments are not an issue and have no additional cost.
    It allows integration and custom development.
    There is no monthly fee, only a fixed fee of 1.4% per transaction and an additional €0.25 for European cards and €2.9 and €0.25 for non-European cards.
    Stripe has the ability to accept a wide variety of payment methods.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

[tonysth...@gmail.com]

Just a thought you could also use other sites maybe like payoneer. As well as dwolla E-Check platform they only charged a quarter per transaction. They said they allow pretty much anything as long as it's not illegal and obviously nothing gross if that makes sense but I mean there are plenty of other options. But I understand PayPal is hard to deal with I've been with them since 2001 I know what it takes to stay with them. I would just find other options eventually because the more you struggle with PayPal the more you're going to have to have problems just my opinion there are plenty of other options

[seedfu...@gmail.com]

PLEASE GUYS, ACCEPT BITCOIN!

WHen attempting to use Stripe Bitcoin option it said that it was not accepting. Move away from PayPal for now until you resolve this, but there are many ways for you to continue to be supported by the community. :)

Patreon would be another great avenue. We LOVE SOULSEEK.

[groovyu...@gmail.com]

Hi, i like to donate! But I don't have a creditcard!

[faircity]

Get a prepaid card. I use www.swirlcard.com

[wyatt....@gmail.com]

Yeah. Please accept BTC.

[Speurlok]

Can you activate Ideal-payments for stripe? now its is not possible for me to donate. (Ideal is Dutch and in testmode available in stripe)

[Janusz Prosty]

it does not look safe... no https , just a pop-up window wanting my cred card number.... 

sobota, 1 września 2018 o 00:21:49 UTC+2 faircity napisał(a):

Just use stripe. safe & fast

[Kaczor Donald]

just a pop-up window with no https , wanting my credit card... no thanks

wtorek, 14 sierpnia 2018 o 23:40:09 UTC+2 faircity napisał(a):

Don't see what the problem with Stripe is ?

[Janne Wolterbeek]

Crypto is fine again! :)

Op zondag 9 december 2018 om 01:54:58 UTC+1 schreef majes...@gmail.com:

I'm a fan of crypto currency, but right now (Dec 2018), who in their right mind would use it? The Bitcoin and ETH currencies are falling through the floor. I've lost nearly 70% of my ETH value since the start of the year, and doubt I'll be putting my money in anytime soon.

[David C (-Much Hustle-)]

+1

This is why Crypto exist. Doge or Cosmos have great communities or Monero has built in privacy.

On Friday, August 24, 2018 at 6:57:14 PM UTC-7 nept...@gmail.com wrote:

Give me an address to send crypto to.