Good point, and you are right that I was sloppy in my wording. But it's Slashdot, after all.

It isn't just you, it's everywhere, even big name journalists and news organizations. I've been seeing and hearing it repeatedly through this whole Epstein affair and it seems like nobody even notices.

Extortion: Pay money or suffer pain of some activity.

Blackmail: Pay money to keep information from being released.

These terms are not freely interchangeable.

That's interesting.

Why would it be useful to block your users from email they need to receive? That is what happens when cargo cult admins who pretend to know everything but know very little about mail server administration do when they configure a remote list manager that operates with no accountability the power to block legitimate access to your own server.

Do you have experience configuring and maintaining mail servers?

In practice, DMARC is only for proof-of-work to the oligopolist email providers that shit on anyone who doesn't have 1 million per hour hitting their servers. Admins ignore DMARC on the receiving end. Even Google sends p=reject to the spam folder.

If they want to look at something that matters, pay attention to blacklists. These opaque organizations have near total autonomy to block any mail server they desire. Even when you email experienced admins that they are using spamassassin to block legit mail because they refuse to learn how to use spamassassin, they tell you that you are stupid and go away.

In fact, it does support the claim perfectly. If the shop or Ohlins were to gain crony government laws to grant them monopoly power, I would have to run Ohlins and go to that shop and we would all be whining about the motorcycle suspension monopoly.

The shop's choice to voluntarily enter an exclusive contract does not create a monopoly as monopoly would have to exist prior to the exclusive agreement for it to be a monopoly, by definition.

The banking industry is one of, if not the most, heavily regulated industries in the United States.

Failure to understand crony laws create monopolies is why we have monopolies.

The monopoly control is created by the laws. Repeal those laws and PayPal will shrink to nothing or stop closing legitimate accounts. Exclusivity agreements exist in many industries and do little to maintain any monopoly positions. A local motorcycle shop only works on Ohlins brand suspension. I have suspension not Ohlins brand, so I go to a different shop. The exclusivity does not earn my business and another business grows.

The problem with cryptocurrency is I somehow have to get their value in dollars, so it is still just a speculative payments system since the value, in dollars, continues to be too volatile.

I'm also at a loss as to why anyone keeps a balance in their PayPal. I still read reports of people who had their PayPal accounts frozen with an amount of money that was certainly more than even 6 months of revenue.

It's not a bank account!