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

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.

Comments

What the hell is Twitch?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

wtf russia

[Anonymous Coward]

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(!).

Re:Well known fact;

[Anonymous Coward]

PayPal may suck, but they redeemed themselves with this action.

LOL @ iNexus_Ninja.

Number 23

[Greyfox]

Giving PayPal access to $50,000 of your funds: Priceless.

Re:Forget Russia, Hillary spent $1 mil on trolls

[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

This is what probably did it

[slashmydots]

If only they had some sort of video evidence of his actual donation live and in realtime...and full HD 60FPS. OH WAIT.

I despise PayPal, but .....

[King_TJ]

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.

Re:I despise PayPal, but .....

[Anonymous Coward]

This. By the time you send $1 to anybody via PayPal, you have already explicitly agreed that you will use the service for its intended purpose, and there are multiple steps in performing a transaction requiring you to explicitly affirm you are authorized to send the money, you want to send the money, etc. Webpage fine print and click-through agreements have legal force; they are contractual terms which you essentially accept by using the service. Not only is PayPal entitled to rely on your representations of the legitimacy of the transactions you're using it for, but If PayPal allowed these trolling practices to continue, they would eventually be sued by, e.g., somebody who went out and placed a non-refundable deposit on XYZ thinking that they had received a genuine windfall in the form of a cash-in-hand gift from a stranger. It's not PayPal's job to sort out whose legal claim is more of a threat; they can simply retreat behind counsel and dare the troll to file the ridiculous lawsuit seeking return of the funds that he deliberately but insincerely caused to be transfered. And of course by filing suit he is simultaneously revealing his troll identity to the entire world. At your service, Legal.Troll (dodging -1 Karma as anon coward).

Re:Well known fact;

[Guspaz]

> WTF? How the fuck is this even a troll.

Because he didn't do it right away, he'd wait until the streamers had spent the money, and then try to issue the refund with PayPal, which would then cause PayPal to charge the streamer back for the money. In essence, he was putting the streamers in debt.

Really, he ought to go to jail for that, but at least in this case he got stiffed.

Re:PayPal does something for their 'vendors'?

[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.