What is this I don't even

[telophase]

Of all the ridiculous things! From the Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs, regarding their Paypal account being locked up:

Paypal has currently locked our account due to the name of the single note Iranian Galbanum. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. Once Paypal is working again, please do not use the name Iranian Galbanum. If you wish to order it, just order Galbanum or Single Note Galbanum.

Sheesh.

Comments

[green_knight]

I was thinking that in response to Facebook the other day - all those businesses that built their business based on FB pages and broadcasting information and offers to FB friends and who now find they need to either pay $$$ or reach only 10% of people who opted into receiving such material.

Basically, building your business ona single provider - whether Youtube or Paypal or Facebook - is looking more and more like a really scary thing, however many opportunities those companies seem to offer initially.

[telophase]

I have never understood businesses who put pages on Facebook and then make them private to FB readers. I'm currently Toby's connection to the news of a local brewery, because Toby refuses to get a Facebook account and the brewery has their FB page locked down, for no apparent reason. They've got a news RSS feed on their regular website, but FB is where you get things like customers letting people know where they spotted limited edition beer being sold, and so on.

[green_knight]

Only that now a FB page that is supposed to update all the people who signed up to see it will reach only around 10% unless you pay FB a fortune to promote the post. And they've done something quite clever - first built a system that people can't live without (computers and phones come with FB built in these days) and now they're holding users to ransom. If you don't want your business revenue to drop, pay us $$$. Per post.

So in the future, you will have to check that page manually or you'll miss out on stuff, it's no longer reliably pushed to where you can see it.

[telophase]

I haven't run across a clear explanation of why a post won't be seen by more than a fraction of subscribers. If you read the help text on FB's site, it makes it sound like the problem is that people have so much stuff updating on their wall that if they don't sit there and scroll down to all of it, they won't see everything, and that promoting just makes sure the post sticks up near the top of the page (as in their "Top Stories" sorting, which I have turned off by default, thank you Chrome extension). The articles make it sound like FB just isn't putting the posts on subscribers' news feeds, but haven't come out and said that's exactly what's going on (at least none of the ones I've read).

So: confused. Ah well.

[emceeaich]

Of all the jingoistic, racist shit to pull.

[telophase]

Yup. I have no idea why on earth Paypal would put that in as a trigger.

[cynthia1960]

I have to go through export control training at my work and my only theory is that that name is triggering something that makes Paypal think BPAL is doing business with Iran.

[emceeaich]

It's still racist and jingoistic.

[cynthia1960]

see my reply below

[kore]

I saw that! How FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Did you ever hear the article about the trouble Iranian-Americans have buying Apple products? It's...special.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

No, but when my dad was in the UK, he wanted me to buy him an Apple Ipod in the US and hoof it over BY HAND so he could get one with US base whatsit, because they couldn't get AOL US news over there. Maddening. I would believe practically any ridiculousness at this rate with getting apple products. I ended up not being close enough in line to buy him one before I went over to visit, but if a high-end US rich dude is having problems, I suspect everyone else is fucked.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

No, I hadn't heard of that!