"Changes to Add Payment Method Process" - Discussion Thread

[Love Zhaoying]

ETA: I SWEAR there was a blog post! I even read it!! I will update this post if it reappears.

A blog was posted just now about a change to adding payment methods. Discuss it here!

To me, the only "interesting" part of this is, "it looks like Tilia" changes. At least LL is informing us...?

 

 

Edited September 25 by Love Zhaoying

[Rowan Amore]

24 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

A blog was posted just now about a change to adding payment methods. Discuss it here!

To me, the only "interesting" part of this is, "it looks like Tilia" changes. At least LL is informing us...?

 

 

Or not.

[Sid Nagy]

Most likely someone hit the publish button too early.

Maybe we can pay in peanuts, cookies or with shells soon, who knows.
Nah, maybe with the next update.

The blog came online again just now.

 

Edited September 25 by Sid Nagy

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

The blog came online again just now.

Yup, it's back!

[Prokofy Neva]

I'm glad there's a dedicated blog now about this, but I'm not sure.

What I have found in recent weeks is increasing numbers of tenants telling me that they are simply unable to buy Lindens whether they use a credit card, PayPal, or Skrillex. What can I do but tell them to file a ticket?

I myself curiously have been unable to pay one of my accounts. Why, is a mystery, given that I have a) checked off the box saying I will comply with Tilia's new TOS, a box they now have which you must read and check or you can't use your credit card/PayPal b) use the exact same PayPal or debit card that I had on file for other accounts. What can I do but file a ticket?

These tickets are not answered in a day or three days but ok, it happens.

Since currently most of my accounts are working, payable, and have that Tilia box checked off, I don't want to tempt fate and try to erase everything and try stepping through the new process for the sake of my tenants. I may do it just on that one account that curiously developed some glitch.

Here is further information, anecdotal, but perhaps we can figure how to fix this:

Some people call their banks when they can't buy Lindens. Their banks are mystified and can't help. As I personally know from this problem in the past, the bank may even have an international banking code that has the word ARCADE on it. In that case, you have to tell your bank that your payment is for SERVER FEES.  Gambling is illegal in the US; SL is not an "arcade" with pinball machines that you put quarters into in the way your bank may imagine.

Some people are told that PayPal is the problem. It is very hard to call PayPal. But I have done it -- I have to, in my translation business, when the client's payment verified as having gone out TWO WEEKS AGO is still not there. Etc. You can reach people on PayPal. More often than not they are in Bangalore or Kuala Lumpur and not be au courant on what Second Life is, but they can read you a helpful cue card. They can reassure you that they are looking into the problem. You can file a ticket.

I have my own theories for what this is about, which is the aspects of the deal between Tilia and PayPal which may have changed as in "PLEASE LISTEN CAREFULLY AS OUR MENU HAS CHANGED". But why speculate? File a ticket.

We "now know" why grid.status.net does not show any problems with buying Lindens -- although it should. That's because the Lindens believe this to be a PICNIC problem, not server side. PICNIC means PROBLEM IN CHAIR, NOT IN COMPUTER. If you can't read their blog and do their things and file a ticket, it's your problem.

 

 

[WeFlossDaily]

Had this problem the other week.

The solution I found was to login into the marketplace via an external browser.

It worked.

[Alwin Alcott]

i guess they want more info about you as new Tilia owners..  it was just a matter of time before they got more greedy about it, the old info wasnt bringing enough $ for selling the extra data to zuckerberg after they collected it about your interests.

[Prokofy Neva]

7 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

i guess they want more info about you as new Tilia owners..  it was just a matter of time before they got more greedy about it, the old info wasnt bringing enough $ for selling the extra data to zuckerberg after they collected it about your interests.

There isn't any demand for new information, however. Go and step through it. 

There isn't any evidence whatsoever that Linden Lab sells our data to Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook -- who, BTW, discourages anonymous avatars as distinct from real persons on his platform.

The Lindens could help prevent this sort of nonsensical and ignorant claim like what we're getting on Primfeed now by explaining what they are complying with -- which regulation, which new or old law, which perception of a new or old law (since they banned gatchas, for example, on the basis of a vibe, not a law or even a query from any law enforcement official).

It's helpful to recall that LL sold Tillia; we don't really know the new company; but regardless, they have an established relationship with PayPal. The ONLY way to cash your Lindens out to dollars and then to your bank is to first sell them on the LindEx controlled by Linden Lab, then send them to the only processor, Tillia, which then sends them to PayPal, taking out fees along the way. I'm not sure Lindens will send you a bank check overseas anymore; I believe they stopped doing wire transfers some years ago.

Skrillex also apparently does such cashouts in Europe; I haven't tested it. There isn't another relatively easy and fast way in the US (5-7 days now -- an even longer period after they had us sign the new TOS of Tillia some months ago) to cash out your money from your virtual business.

This is regulated in the US and elsewhere; they have always complied with these regulations and are not shady or dodgy; PayPal  has become more and more difficult over the years and taken longer and longer to get you your payment -- I just waited 14 days for a personal payment in the form of an e-check from Texas in a RL transaction unrelated to SL. That's ridiculous. They earn off the float -- understood. 

But part of the justification of these long periods is precisely that they are vetting the funds and the sources. It's helpful to read the "Acceptable Use" agreement on PayPal. It does not ban transactions involving virtual worlds as some have claimed. Read it! Use common sense. Tillia could not have an *agreement with PayPal* to cash out Lindens TO PAYPAL if PayPal found something unlawful about this.

 

Edited September 26 by Prokofy Neva

[Alwin Alcott]

46 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

There isn't any evidence whatsoever that Linden Lab sells our data to Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook

unless it's changed in the past time, there were  FB trackers on quite some LL/SL pages.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

Note the second sentence:

Quote

As part of the first round of Resident facing changes...

That means more rounds of changes are coming.  That's great news.  Everybody in SL loves change!

I bet the new rounds of changes are going to be needed to fully implement Philip Rosedale's Love Machine!  Before you know it, you will be buying new outfits on the MP by running scrum meetings with content creators, to barter job lists for new jeans, rather than pay for them with money, like some kind of primitive capitalist freak.  Once the Love Machine is fully operational, Philip will triumphantly return, to usher in a new golden age!

[Prokofy Neva]

4 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

unless it's changed in the past time, there were  FB trackers on quite some LL/SL pages.

There aren't any inworld, is what you mean to say.

If there are FB trackers on LL/SL pages, then don't visit them? You don't need them to enjoy Second Life. That's not "selling your data to Mark Zuckberg" in the way you implied -- data about what we do inworld, with whom we associate, where we go, what we buy, our chat, etc. That LL may give to Meta the facts that some entity came to their page from FB or visa versa, and that entity is in New York, etc. doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I read a book recently where the journalist began telling us all the horrors of "how they track you" and "what they know" etc. But then she swerved off to ranting about AI. Because it isn't that scary a story.

I'm at the other end of this fear spectrum myself. I willingly sign up with companies to have them track me and pay me in Amazon cards every month. 

I don't go on Facebook much, but I've seldom found it to cause any harm except with the usual grifters and Kremlin trolls trying to friend you, but that's different. 

Edited September 26 by Prokofy Neva

[Anna Salyx]

13 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

There isn't any evidence whatsoever that Linden Lab sells our data to Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook -- who, BTW, discourages anonymous avatars as distinct from real persons on his platform.

 

FWIW  FaceBook has become a bit more lenient on that.  You might be able create "sub profiles" under your main account profile that can represent different interests. 

Quote

Unlike your main profile, your additional profiles are not required to use the name you go by in everyday life.

Additional Facebook profiles can represent different things about you like your interests or communities you belong to. Each profile has a unique @username that will appear on the profile. Each profile also has its own friends list and Feed and can follow different groups and Pages.

I have one for my Second Life So i can do the like can share store contests w/out bothering my everyday friends

[Prokofy Neva]

47 minutes ago, Anna Salyx said:

FWIW  FaceBook has become a bit more lenient on that.  You might be able create "sub profiles" under your main account profile that can represent different interests. 

I have one for my Second Life So i can do the like can share store contests w/out bothering my everyday friends

Obviously all kinds of weekend sales in SL now use Facebook as a free web designer to show off their images from merchants. I actually hate that because the pages load poorly and the whole thing looks tacky. I'm also not interested in using my RL account to re-post their contest so I can with $5000L by "like," "post my SL name" and "repost" because then my RL friends say, WTF is that? I don't really mind, but still, I ALREADY get that for criticizing Russia, or the Haitian pets crazy thing, etc. So I like to reduce the surface area. 

A sub-account or a *page* is not your main account. there is a "Prokofy Neva on Facebook who is NOT ME. The account there links to a petition to remove me from SL that is so ancient that the petition service they used has gone out of business as these sorts of Web 2.0 things often do. That page still exists because pages can. An avatar with that name which was AR'd seems to be gone now. If I make a new FB account with that avatar name, I guarantee you it will not last a week.

Once again, I have to ask what possible data the "scrapers" that LL might use "for Facebook" -- however that decodes for people -- from you coming from secondlife.com to facebook.com

The packet of information it has is not from your inworld avatar. It's from you surfing the web as the variety of personas that you are, ranging from RL legal person with payment info on file to your WoW character to your SL avatar. I think if you are bothered by that you should get off the Internet. More and more, people do, sometimes by dying of COVID.

[Anna Salyx]

7 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Obviously all kinds of weekend sales in SL now use Facebook as a free web designer to show off their images from merchants. I actually hate that because the pages load poorly and the whole thing looks tacky. I'm also not interested in using my RL account to re-post their contest so I can with $5000L by "like," "post my SL name" and "repost" because then my RL friends say, WTF is that? I don't really mind, but still, I ALREADY get that for criticizing Russia, or the Haitian pets crazy thing, etc. So I like to reduce the surface area. 

A sub-account or a *page* is not your main account. there is a "Prokofy Neva on Facebook who is NOT ME. The account there links to a petition to remove me from SL that is so ancient that the petition service they used has gone out of business as these sorts of Web 2.0 things often do. That page still exists because pages can. An avatar with that name which was AR'd seems to be gone now. If I make a new FB account with that avatar name, I guarantee you it will not last a week.

Once again, I have to ask what possible data the "scrapers" that LL might use "for Facebook" -- however that decodes for people -- from you coming from secondlife.com to facebook.com

The packet of information it has is not from your inworld avatar. It's from you surfing the web as the variety of personas that you are, ranging from RL legal person with payment info on file to your WoW character to your SL avatar. I think if you are bothered by that you should get off the Internet. More and more, people do, sometimes by dying of COVID.

I think you mistook, (but I might be wrong), when I commented about a profile page.  So, assuming that that might be the case, this is what I was talking about:

it's not a new account, it's just a profile linked to the main account. The top blurred out is my actual account "profile", the RL me,  the bottom is a page I admin on, the middle there is my SL one that I do anything related for SL wit: following store pages, following SL content creatros, liking posts on store pages or commenting, the very occasional like/share things.  It keeps my feed cleaner as well, by funneling those into their own bucket so they don't get lost in my 'meme' pages.  or my meme pages don't drown in SL spam.

Yes, FB is still scraping data, and it's linked back to the RL me, and I, personally am okay with this (as much as I can be, being a commodity for FB) but this allows *me* to compartmentalize my RL social presence and my SL presences in that specific space to their own buckets.  This was not possible before and to try and do that was to create a truly separate account which is fully frowned on by FB, as you pointed out.

And so, it's true, yes, that FB does still not easily allow for a truly anonymous presence that is wholly unlinked from your RL self,  *BUT* if you're simply looking for a way to outwardly separate out an online ID from your RL ID for any number of reasons, it's more possible now in that space.  That's all I was trying to say.

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, Anna Salyx said:

it's not a new account, it's just a profile linked to the main account.

Yes, FB asked me recently if I wanted to create a new one also. I had posted about it on the Forum. I'd think about it if FB "isolated" them so people can't tell at a glance the relationship between the profiles. Do you know if that's the case?

[Anna Salyx]

14 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Yes, FB asked me recently if I wanted to create a new one also. I had posted about it on the Forum. I'd think about it if FB "isolated" them so people can't tell at a glance the relationship between the profiles. Do you know if that's the case?

yes, they're fully isolated.  The sub-profile *IS* marked as being a secondary profile for someone else for transparency, but at the same time it does not ever point back to the original ID. Probably for safety  (domestic abuse / stalker) reasons.  but if you're not careful there could be breadcrumbs you drop that might lead back to your main profile, but that's same as using alt avatars here. That's a safety onus on you.

 

edit to add:

this is what people see when they first land on your profile page.  that's it.

Edited September 27 by Anna Salyx
add a tiny example

[Prokofy Neva]

9 hours ago, Anna Salyx said:

I think you mistook, (but I might be wrong), when I commented about a profile page.  So, assuming that that might be the case, this is what I was talking about:

it's not a new account, it's just a profile linked to the main account. The top blurred out is my actual account "profile", the RL me,  the bottom is a page I admin on, the middle there is my SL one that I do anything related for SL wit: following store pages, following SL content creatros, liking posts on store pages or commenting, the very occasional like/share things.  It keeps my feed cleaner as well, by funneling those into their own bucket so they don't get lost in my 'meme' pages.  or my meme pages don't drown in SL spam.

Yes, FB is still scraping data, and it's linked back to the RL me, and I, personally am okay with this (as much as I can be, being a commodity for FB) but this allows *me* to compartmentalize my RL social presence and my SL presences in that specific space to their own buckets.  This was not possible before and to try and do that was to create a truly separate account which is fully frowned on by FB, as you pointed out.

And so, it's true, yes, that FB does still not easily allow for a truly anonymous presence that is wholly unlinked from your RL self,  *BUT* if you're simply looking for a way to outwardly separate out an online ID from your RL ID for any number of reasons, it's more possible now in that space.  That's all I was trying to say.

1. Good luck with that. They may or may not ban it. It really depends on whether you have enemies who exploit these mass AR tools and their automated moderation systems.

2. It doesn't bother me that FB scrapes my data. I don't like FB for other reasons and don't go on there much. When I do, I write posts that will guarantee some of my "friends" to drop me and that makes for better friend management. 

3. I don't compartmentalize my SL and RL completely, but I believe that it's useful to have channels where you focus your attention and get different streams of information. So I have three accounts on Xitter for that reason. Mastodon was slow and wonky so I combined my RL and SL personas there but then it got quite dull there because there aren't enough people with my interests.

[Prokofy Neva]

I have now had a chance to step through this new payment process on several accounts. Ideally, I would have a brand-new card to try to add but I don't have one now so I used the same cards already established in the past on my accounts.

I couldn't see anything different about it at all.

You enter the exact same information that you always entered in the past, or enter on any site where you are making a payment, say a site where you pay for Spectrum mobile phone service or a credit card paymet. You can pull the data off Google Pay manager of credit and debit accounts but just like the previous interface, it won't go through until you "add address manually" and pull down menus for your country.

I did several of them and I cannot see anything different except *the look* of the interface, the way it is laid out. One tiny difference is that it shows you in red if one credit card happened to expire so you can remove it and put in the updated one.

Possibly on the backend something new is happening we can't see. In small print on the interface it says something about having created a "token" in order to make payments with. But that "token" -- the sum total of your credit or debit card's information or your PayPal

There is a lot of hysterical nonsense here on this thread on Primfeed that I am puzzled doesn't get any attempt from LL or Tillia to set people straight and I find myself in the really odd position of having to defend PayPal, Tillia, and LL from the craziest notions from some of the residents out there, although of course I'm a critic of these entities for various reasons unrelated to the speed or accuracy or due diligence of their payment processing -- EXCEPT for Tillia's long wait. I think Tillia should not be imposing that wait; that we are "work for hire" (1099 employees) and should have a payment upon presentation of invoice, so to speak, which is the collection of our tokens -- Linden dollars -- that we received for our businesses in SL or in any lawful way on the platform.

The summary of the hysteria boils down to this: some trans people have allegedly experienced a difficulty with PayPal when they changed their names on their identification cards as part of their transition and PayPal then allegedly continued to "deadname" them and not accept their new ID cards. 

When I tried to read this laterally (open tabs, look for other information from other sources, try to evalute the statements and claims made, try to triangulate from other sources), I found...a Reddit thread of *two years ago* with *one person* claiming she had problems; meanwhile other people including from her own country (the same as the OP on Primfeed) said they had no problem. It's like a lot of things in life. You say "my computer doesn't work" and some geek says "Works On My Machine" and you give him that seal as a prize but you're still stuck. So...file a ticket with PP then because Tillia is not the problem.

People make wild claims that PayPal does not allow you to accept payments for virtual content or virtual services. Nonsense. Read their "Acceptable Use" policy page. Tillia could not *have a formal agreement with PayPal for cashouts from SL involving designers of virtual content, etc.* if PayPal had such a policy. There isn't any effort to use common sense and logic on these hysterical posts. Maybe that's why LL decided simply to ignore them. But the 'knock" on PP keeps going and the problem is that Tillia has only Skrillex as an alternative to Paypal. If you are saying oh, let Tillia work with Venmo -- PayPal owns Venmo, don't be silly. How about Zelle, separately owned by another company, not related to PayPal? Etc. Well, for each and every relationship like that, Tillia has to lawyer up and spend time and treasure establishing all that, I have no idea how hard or easy it is.

PayPal works. It has worked for the entire time I have used it with SL. I am estimating this is at least 15 years, since 2009 or so, maybe earlier, and I have used it constantly for my RL translation and editing business. Tillia of course, as I have explained in other threads, is uneven; it can take now the full 7 days of the 5-7 days it has extended to, although for some lucky folks it's 3-5 days, and the principle for these differences is opaque. But that's a separate problem from PayPal "deadnaming trans people". I do not see any list anywhere of this as some massive or substantive complaint. If you do, you need links and facts, not rumours.

 

Edited September 29 by Prokofy Neva

[JacksonBollock]

Probably good news in that, as Tilia gets more fully integrated into Thunes' network, we should eventually get more payment options, as well as real-time payout capabilities to bank accounts or digital wallets.

This is the first update in what will be a few (I'm guessing), and really just limited to adding payment methods, but aligns with some broader changes I see coming to improve payment flexibility and compliance.

Less popular aspects (probably) will be around some recent tightening of financial compliance laws - particularly regarding Money Services Businesses (MSBs) and anti-money laundering (AML) requirements.

I believe Tilia operates as a licensed MSB in multiple U.S. states, and is subject to these tightening regulations, including Know Your Customer (KYC) and AML laws, which mandate stricter controls over identity verification and transaction monitoring to prevent fraud and money laundering.

So the upside is more flexibility, less cost, and real time payouts - downside is "they" will ultimately have to know more about you.

As these updates are rolled, expect a few more "glitches" though, it's LL we're talking about after all!

All of this is just me thinking out loud, but makes sense - to me anyway  

[Coffee Pancake]

9 hours ago, JacksonBollock said:

Probably good news in that, as Tilia gets more fully integrated into Thunes' network

Wasn't the sale pending regulatory approval and such .. do we know if that's happened yet or not?

[Quistess Alpha]

7 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

do we know if that's happened yet or not?

As of late august, it was still pending approval, and I can't find any later news articles mentioning anything relevant, so, as far as I know, hasn't ~really happened yet, but there's no reason it won't happen "soon".

[Ceka Cianci]

I hope they keep the same page they have now in the dashboard for already existing payment methods..

I have two payment methods  that I switch back and forth from. I like how quick it is to switch real quick from one to another..

If this is just for adding a new one, that's not a big deal to me..