Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Businesses The Almighty Buck The Internet Communications Media Network Networking News Games

PayPal Denies Twitch Troll $50,000 Worth In Refunds (ubergizmo.com) 194

An anonymous reader writes: Trolling is commonplace on the internet. On Twitch, one of the many ways people troll Twitch streamers is by making donations, only to get a refund from PayPal at the very last minute, thus tricking streamers into thinking they've been given large sums of money. A troll by the name of iNexus_Ninja has been doing exactly this. However, when he tried to go to PayPal to refund the charges, PayPal decided to deny his request which ultimately left the troll $50,000 in debt. Twitch streamers apparently fought against his request for a refund and won. Meanwhile, Russia is paying state-sponsored trolls, elevating the troll to the level of professional propagandists.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

PayPal Denies Twitch Troll $50,000 Worth In Refunds

Comments Filter:
  • by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2016 @06:42PM (#52271229)

    One of the many reasons I'm not using PayPal is because they thrive of these refunds and using any excuse possible to lock large sums of money in their system. Obviously they continue claiming they're "not a bank" and therefore don't have to follow any of the rules that any other merchant account needs to. With a little bit of looking around you can find cheaper options to PayPal, even solid merchant accounts for credit card processing.

    • yep if you run any sort of business a merchant account threw a bank offers way more protection. but the problem is everyone uses paypal.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      One of the many reasons I'm not using PayPal is because they thrive of these refunds and using any excuse possible to lock large sums of money in their system. Obviously they continue claiming they're "not a bank" and therefore don't have to follow any of the rules that any other merchant account needs to. With a little bit of looking around you can find cheaper options to PayPal, even solid merchant accounts for credit card processing.

      In Europe paypal is regulated like a real bank. So they can't do their usual shenanigans.
      They still suck, but they suck less than if I were using them from the US of A.

    • I buy games through bundles and one says unequivocally that PayPal has the lowest fees, but they use a separate processor for credit cards. eBay still uses only PayPal, despite them being split up into two separate companies again. I used to have a Google Wallet account to use a credit card, but they've discontinued the credit card feature, and recommended Simple.com. I've taken to having PayPal pulling money from my Simple.com account, the first time I've been having things work that way. I was sick in the
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • See what happens if I open a place where I serve food and claim not to be a restaurant. I should be able to sell food for a much lower price,

        This actually exists, hopefully minus the green meat. They are called food trucks, and it is a big issue in the same circles that Uber is a big issue. Brick and mortar restaurants don't like them because they steal their lucrative lunch crowds and don't have the fixed overhead of a restaurant. So cities try to regulate them out of business .... and eventually they

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          A food truck serving meals is a restaurant without the expenses of a building. Around here, anyone selling food has to cope with rules about cleanliness, food quality and so on.

          • If I told my wife we were going to a restaurant, and I took her to a food truck, she would divorce me.
            • by Trogre ( 513942 )

              That's funny.

              But I don't think that disqualifies a food truck from being a restaurant. Just not a fancy restaurant.

              Presumably your wife also would not appreciate being taken to the local McDonalds or Subway. Do you also consider them not restaurants?

              • Obviously any institution or person that serves food should be subject to appropriate food safety regulations, etc. I don't think "restaurant" is the official term for an institution that serves food. Or at the very least it probably varies by state.

                I would say that a food truck is a type of restaurant, like how a truck is a type of car. I think a good logical argument could be made for this type of classification, but I don't think anyone I know would actually call a food truck a restaurant (myself incl

          • by Cederic ( 9623 )

            Nah. Maybe a cafe if it's a fixed location truck.

            But the issue is around competition between catering outlets. Restaurants offer different benefits to the local burger van, pub grub competes with bistro snack bars, they're all in the same market and as you say, they all have to adhere to the same food hygiene laws.

            PayPal built their company by ignoring the financial regulations and fucking over their customers. I wont eat at a rat infested restaurant with abusive waiting staff, and I don't use PayPal.

            Whethe

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I hate PayPal and how they make up their own rules as they go. I sold a laptop on eBay, 5 months later the guy asks for refund on PayPal because it broke. I deny due to it being 5 months, but apparently they have a 6 month return policy and don't care about my return policy that was stated on eBay. The buyer returned a different laptop than I sent, but that didn't stop them from taking what they could and refunding his money. Lucky for me, I didn't trust them from the start and had a separate account for eB

    • Yeah, PayPal doesn't offer any of the protections of a bank. That's why everyone should use Bitcoin!

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Am I missing something here? I've never heard of Twitch.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by hawguy ( 1600213 )

      Am I missing something here? I've never heard of Twitch.

      Yes, you're apparently missing the ability to do a simple Google search.

      This may help you:

      http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+t... [lmgtfy.com]

      (hint: click any of the 10 results on the first page)

    • But when you see a commercial on TV about product XX you've never heard of, you don't wonder "why are they talking about XX", right?
      • by FatdogHaiku ( 978357 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2016 @08:28PM (#52271779)

        But when you see a commercial on TV about product XX you've never heard of, you don't wonder "why are they talking about XX", right?

        Because they can't do XXX on TV?

      • I would wonder, "how the hell did I end up stuck in a room with screens I don't control, that are showing commercial propaganda, and where the bleep is the exit?

        • by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

          No kidding. My daughters have grown up in a house with only streaming TV. When we're at a hotel and have the TV on, they complain loudly when commercials come on, because their show went away and they don't want to watch whatever this other junk is. I don't blame them one bit. At least they're getting old enough to understand it when it happens.

      • by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
        dos equis is good but I prefer negra modelo when I'm in Mexico.
    • by guruevi ( 827432 )

      It's Youtube for channels with a focus on live streaming.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      It's a live porncam platform for gamers.

      reference: legendarylea

      captcha: depress

    • by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2016 @06:53PM (#52271299)

      Am I missing something here? I've never heard of Twitch.

      Don't you people have *any* social awareness?

      tWitch [wikipedia.org] is a popular dancer who made his name on season 4 of So You Think You Can Dance.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I thought it was an early album by Ministry

      • Hmm no. Twitch is one of the two twitches [imdb.com].
      • Wow, you're in pretty deep if you think that a company is society. And indeed, only companies that spend a lot of money on propaganda.

        I'll give you a hint: that isn't what social awareness means.

  • the main troll they do isnt large amounts its normally small amounts like 1$ so the refund after fees cost more then they donated. third party's have stepped in to help prevent it they act as a escrow and blacklist known donation trolls.
    • Any recommended third parties? Someone I know was working on a political site, and was looking for a way to collect donations that wasn't susceptible to that kind of trolling.

      Also, it kinda amazes me that the major candidates haven't been blasted with tons of chargebacks from such trolls.

      • Also, it kinda amazes me that the major candidates haven't been blasted with tons of chargebacks from such trolls.

        May be, they have, but they don't want to feed the troll by telling the world what happened.

        Also, candidates don't have a real-time update of campaign contributions they're getting, which defeats the main purpose of a troll.

        Most trolls want attention and publicity. You deny them that possibility and they move on to easier targets.

      • Re:good (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Aighearach ( 97333 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2016 @09:44PM (#52272097)

        If you attempt a chargeback without cause, they'll dispute it and win, your card will get canceled, and you'll potentially be unable to get a credit card for a few years because of credit abuse. Fake chargebacks are no joke, because they deal with banks.

        The reason the trolls can do this with paypal is only because paypal isn't a bank, and so isn't held to the industry standards.

        • Refunds through paypal are free to the merchant though -- they refund the fee. I don't see how the donor can cause expenses to the victim unless they do a chargeback with their credit card company, which will cost the merchant ~$25.

        • Umm... that sounds like a good thing. But while fake chargebacks (and this kind of trolling) are evil and illegal, I'm not sure what recourse someone would have. For a couple of reasons - first, it seems that it'd be hard to get the chargeback upheld. I mean, someone with their CC and CSV (and maybe zip) typed info in. All they have to do is claim it wasn't them. And the counter-argument is?

          Secondly, I'm quite surprised a list of stolen CC's wasn't used to troll one of the candidates. So the chargebac

        • A dispute is a request to get a charge "investigated". A "chargeback" is an instruction to the bank/credit company take the money back and make it my problem.

          Most people don't know that (in the United States) these are completely different things.

          If I dispute a charge then the credit card company may contact the vendor and ask them what happened and generally do a resolution where I may, or may not, get a refund. A dispute takes days, weeks, or even months to run its course.

          A chargeback tells the credit car

          • A dispute is the beginning of the process. A chargeback is the result of a dispute.

            If you ever won a dispute, your card company issued a chargeback.

            The lack of the ability to roll over on any dispute without a chargeback fee seems like a huge flaw in the system.

            It sounds like you kept getting bounced up the ladder until a manager decided that he would say yes to placate you.

            Or, you can show me some documentation that I'm wrong, but I couldn't find any that supported your assertion. See a random source [consumerist.com]

  • by Anonymous Coward

    But this won't get any press from /. editors... it's much easier to bash Russia.

    Correct the Record, a pro-Hillary Clinton political action committee (PAC), is spending over $1 million on online trolls in order to âcorrectâ(TM) Bernie Sanders supporters on social media sites.

    The PAC this week launched an initiative called âoeBarrier Breakers 2016,â which is composed of a âoetask forceâ that will debate âBernie Bros,â(TM) presumably supporters of the Senator Sanders

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I don't see why AC's comment should be rated Troll. After all, the fucking superfluous bit about Russian trolls added to the end of the summary is just an invite to shitpost. It's submitter or BeauHD fault that nobody is going to discuss the actual topic seriously

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      The silliness of the Russian troll claims. The Russian government seems incapable of doing their trolling internally via their security staff or military and must resort to cheap PR contractors. So does the Russian government do it, probably, do they use cheap unreliable contractors, probably not. Anyone can search upon this planet and find literally tens of millions of people who will say anything and make any claim you want them to, if you pay them enough and that enough is quite often not very much at a

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Wait until the Russians wise up and start outsourcing the trolling from India

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by wildstoo ( 835450 )

      From such a reliable and impartial source as Breitbart.com, how could I possibly doubt the veracity of this report?

      Oh, wait...

    • You're linking to a hard right "news" source that is known for lying in public?

  • wtf russia (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 07, 2016 @07:05PM (#52271377)

    WTF does this story have to do with Russia? Who added this aside, anonymous submitter or BeauHD? It fucking retarded to believe that other governments, law firms, ngo's, lobbyists, and other entities involved with "messaging" don't engage in the same type of activities. The current interest about Russian trolls is due to some batshit looney neocon paranoid conspiracy that Putin is trying to get Trump in the White House because he's scared of Hillary(!).

    • The so-called "Russian trolls" bit is real, but it's also a really old story and belongs nowhere in this piece. It took me some time to find the magic search terms, but https://www.bing.com/search?q=... [bing.com] returns the relevant results.
      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        good link. I especially like this story from the results:

        Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal [nytimes.com]

        As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

        ...
        Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.

    • The submission is here: https://news.slashdot.org/subm... [slashdot.org]

      So yes, it was added by BeauHD.

      (The submissions link is in the 'Related Links' section right below the article summary, but for some reason, the Submission link doesn't show up unless you have JavaScript and even then you can't right-click and 'copy link location' on it. Come on, does nobody know basic HTML any more?)

  • Number 23 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2016 @07:22PM (#52271455) Homepage Journal
    Giving PayPal access to $50,000 of your funds: Priceless.
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Later this month, people stupid enough to give money to a crowd-funded project, and do it via PayPal, will be shit out of luck,

      http://www.ubergizmo.com/2016/... [ubergizmo.com]''

      PayPal offers customers Purchase Protection for things they buy, including payments to crowd-funded projects. PayPal has announced that effective June 25 they be changing their TOS and will no longer offer Purchase Protection for crowdfunding. If you donate to a project via PayPal and it fails or turns out to be a scam, PayPal will no longer gua

  • by slashmydots ( 2189826 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2016 @07:50PM (#52271595)
    If only they had some sort of video evidence of his actual donation live and in realtime...and full HD 60FPS. OH WAIT.
  • by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2016 @07:56PM (#52271615) Journal

    It doesn't sound to me like the service was in the wrong, denying a refund in this situation? If you're just using the service to troll people, requesting transfers of funds you know up-front you don't *really* want to transfer, it seems like it's YOUR problem if the payment processor grows tired of participating in your game and declares your funds transfer final.

    As someone who was forced to deal with PayPal's antics as part of the "package deal" selling on eBay when the two of them formed a cartel, I can think of SO many more legitimate situations to complain about PayPal over than this one.

    • by jb_nizet ( 98713 )
      I disagree. If someone is abusing your service, you ban him from the service. If someone harms the service by abusing it, you file a complaint, and ask for a compensation. The justice decides if you deserve a compensation, and how much it should be. But just changing the rules of the game unilaterally and rejecting to give back the 50K$ doesn't look right to me. If the receiver started spending these 50K$ even before they were actually on their bank account, they are plain stupid.
      • by Kkloe ( 2751395 )
        They probably didnt change any game or rule, paypal probably has a statment in the agreement that probably says, if you do something fucky expect to be fucked.
        Everyone has them, just because it doesnt state to the letter every single thing you should not do to break the rules it doesnt mean it doesnt apply.
      • I disagree. If someone is abusing your service, you ban him from the service.

        They did. They banned him from using the refunds due to abuse. This is entirely consistent with what you want.

        Refunds in my opinion should only be possible from the sellers end or from a legal warranty point of view. In that regard donations should NEVER be refundable unless you can explicitly prove the transaction was fraudulent in the first place. I distrust paypal as much as the next person but I fully support them in this point, and I only ever use it from the buyer's side (i.e. the side that would bene

      • by Trogre ( 513942 )

        Troll gets served. What's the problem?

        Perhaps I have missed some of the facts and please correct me if I am mistaken, but here is my understanding of it:

        • He paid $50,000 to one or more Twitch users via PayPal.
        • He then falsely claimed to PayPal that he had not intended to make those payments, expecting a refund.
        • One or more Twitch users make PayPal aware that this troll has behaved this way before.
        • The refund request was denied by PayPal.

        Is that the way of it and, if so, what is the problem?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • ... is Twitch? And why are people 'contributing' to it's members?

    I understood that it was some sort of video streaming/chat service, purportedly used by gamers. But if 'contributions' are really a big thing, I suspect that there might be something other than gaming going on, for which people expect 'contributions'.

    Dare I suggest: Cam whores?

    • Re:What exactly ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fire_Wraith ( 1460385 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2016 @09:55PM (#52272139)
      Actually, no. Twitch has been very quick to crack down on anything remotely sexual. At most you'll find attractive female streamers wearing low cut tops while playing games, but not much beyond that. The donations bit tends to come more from the fact that the best streamers are entertaining, because not only are they good at the game, but they're good at narrating what they're doing, and making it more interesting to watch.

      To try and explain it better, imagine if instead of just watching Aaron Rodgers play football (or any other pro athlete in their sport), but instead of maybe having a couple of outside commentators, you're watching him play, from his point of view, while he tells you what he's doing and why, chatting and interacting with you, and giving you tips on how to do better in your own games. How cool would that be? Nevermind that you can also chat with everyone else watching, too. And while most of the gamers on Twitch aren't on quite that level, even some of those with a smaller following can do alright, with people chipping in to buy pizza for them. Some of them will also run promotions, give away codes for free games, etc. It's probably not for everyone, but it can be very entertaining.
      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        So, if the whole 'contribution' thing is purely a gratuity, not some sort of pay for service, then what's the point in reversing the charges? Why don't the cheap bastards just not pay up front to watch?

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          They reverse the charges because they think it's funny.

          Normally when you make a donation you also get to send a short text message. Sometimes this message will get read out loud. So you donate a couple of dollars, have your troll message read and then reclaim your money and think that it's funny that you both tricked the streamer into thinking (s)he got money and also you tricked the system into giving you a "free" billboard message out (which is often mean or silly).

      • What exactly is Aaron Rodgers?
        • by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

          I assume he's jolly, and is thus some kind of pirate.

        • He's the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, in U.S. professional football. I tried to pick someone that was both "good", and also not known for being a jerk/disliked by various people.

          Maybe I should have gone with a car analogy, and cited a Nascar driver, but I'm not as familiar to make a choice there. :)
  • There, fixed that fpr you with something much more relevant to slashdot. Hi, cold fjord!
  • WHY does this little kid have access to so much money? WTF? Are his parents mentally challenged?

Help fight continental drift.

Working...