Please note that "The Hacker News" is a separate site unrelated to "Hacker News".
And I'm not the only one who noticed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18783710
There needs to be more transparency, and a clear and fair system for arbitration and dispute resolution. Better still, one that's consistent across all digital services so people know what to expect when signing up without wading through a novel's worth of user agreements.
That said, I do think holding money should be cause for more stringent regulations. Stopping service is one thing; holding funds entirely should absolutely happen only under direct court order (anything else would be theft).
We're talking about people's livelihood here. If transactions don't violate any laws, payment processors should not be permitted to refuse service. When they do refuse service, there should be transparency in reporting.
1. (arguably monopolistic) payment processors upon which people's livelihood depends, not restaurants or other noncritical services of which there are many to choose, and
2. It's about discrimination for political motivations, not being abusive to your employees.
There's a hardly a line between religious and political convictions, and if you don't find discrimination along these lines troubling, then I think your bias is showing.
> The current trend of cutting services for political reasons is problematic at best, particularly when there's arguably a monopoly.
Your statement asserts this is a problem ("at best") when a business cuts off service for political reasons, especially if "there's arguably a monopoly". Presumably, from your wording, you are also unhappy when a non-monopoly business cuts off service (which, technically, PayPal is, unless it faces antitrust action that I'm not aware of).
> There's a hardly a line between religious and political convictions, and if you don't find discrimination along these lines troubling, then I think your bias is showing.
And yet, in the U.S., there is a line, because there is an actual federal law that protects religious belief, and there isn't one for political beliefs. I'm not interested in arguing with you the validity of the precedent set by the 1st Amendment's protection for religion, or the validity of religion or its immutability in general, but that's the reality of our current legal framework. So yes, I am biased in favor of reality and not fantasy. Try imagining the tangled framework needed to protect political belief in a way that wouldn't infringe on freedom of expression if you want to understand why political belief has not yet enjoyed such protection.
That's disingenuous. A finding of monopoly status might be legally definitive, but it's not necessary to reasonably conclude that a corporation is a monopoly.
Online payment alternatives certainly exist, in a similar sense that alternatives to MS Windows existed in the 90s. The recent Patreon/SubscribeStar event suggests strongly that there is collusion at the very least, if the source of the suppression was not PayPal itself. That doesn't change the fundamental point being made.
You are correct that I'm unhappy with discrimination based on political beliefs even when non monopolistic corporations are involved, but pragmatically, that's a much longer discussion. Tackling the immediate concern of people of people having their livelihood destroyed for expressing unpopular views would be sufficient as a stop gap.
> Try imagining the tangled framework needed to protect political belief in a way that wouldn't infringe on freedom of expression if you want to understand why political belief has not yet enjoyed such protection.
More than likely it's not a matter of difficulty, it has simply not been needed. The centralisation of power inherent to technology has been changing the landscape considerably.
Regardless, recent studies have clearly shown that conservative and liberal brains are structurally different, so to some extent, political discrimination is discrimination on physiology. I agree that it's a subtle issue as to what should and should not be considered a deeply held conviction, but it's becoming increasingly clear that it is needed.
Do you have proof, or do you just happen to feel this way without actually knowing any background story? If you make such an accusation you should state your reasons, preferably observable facts. Both "hacker" and "news" are generic terms after all.
In addition, even if they did mimic the name, I would not see a problem. It's very descriptive, unlike a completely made-up word that someone spent a lot of effort on to establish as a brand.
If I launched a new site called "TheFacebook.com" tomorrow, what proof would you need that I was, at a minimum, knowingly causing confusion?
I'm not sure how to measure the actual level of recognition of a brand name, but I feel that Hacker News falls into the second or third tier of whatever that ranking is, whereas names like Facebook or Google form the top tier. That, combined with the relatively generic name, make me inclined to believe without further evidence that it's a coincidence - especially given the fact that the site is actually about news related to hacking, or hacker news.
A closer comparison I can think of is if I saw a watch company called "The International Watch Company". The real IWC is a luxury watch company, but the brand and its full name aren't known to many people. In that case too, my opinion is that the name is generic enough for it to feel like an honest coincidence.
In either of the above cases, a Google search turns up the conflicting name as the #1 organic hit, precluding my judgment of an honest coincidence, but I understand your position.
There can't be two companies with the same name in the same niche, which is what is happening here.
On Castro Street in Mountain View they would.
Besides, we aren’t talking about random people, we are talking about the audience for The Hacker News.
Or if that spelling is too specific, "The Read It"
You mean, with the name "ycombinator", right? I remember accessing this site a few times in the (distant) past and was a little confused as to what it was and what it was "selling" (based on the actual frontpage).
I'd check out https://ycombinator.com/ and assumed the news subdomain was a forum or some '1337' thing.
I say this as a slashdotter, digger, redditor (and others) - all of whom have and always had brand naming. I'd say that over the last couple of years, HN has crossed a bridge into the mass market. Before then... it was niche.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_taxicab_operation#In_w...
https://smallbusiness.co.uk/hack-cabs-organic-car-service-25...
A few months ago I was making a news ticker with headlines sourced from hnrss. I had used 'security' as a keyword and posts with score above 100.
I was looking for other sources that provide security news and stumbled upon this one too. What I saw was all posts looked quite similar to the rss filter from hnrss, except all articles were re-written in a slightly different way.
It was all just redundant news from the hnrss feed and other popular security bloggers.