You really have to wonder about PayPal. Every day they seamlessly process a squillion pissy little transactions from countless innumerate trailer-trash. Nice work. Then they ruin their reputation with Kafkaesque requests and oddly incompetent “service”. Like now.

“We need your help resolving an issue with your PayPal account,” they emailed me on 9 May. “We need a little more information regarding your organisation, since your PayPal account is registered as a charity or non-profit.” Huh?

As Gary Stark tweeted just now, “You, a non-profit? While that might not be your intention, it’s probably just about right.” That’s true enough. But I’m certainly not a charity or non-profit, I’m certainly not tax-exempt, and I’ve never claimed to be. I’m not even an “organisation”. And have never claimed to be.

By “a little more information” PayPal means photo ID, another document showing my address, a bank statement linking me to my bank account, confirmation that I’m not not a “politically exposed person”, and “organisation and payment information”, whatever that might be. But I’ve been travelling for the last fortnight and I’m not carrying all this stuff.

They’re also asking for one item I’m going to have trouble with. Proof of my tax-exempt status. For no such thing exists. As Leslie Nassar tweeted, “If you can’t prove you’re not who you’re not saying you aren’t, then no Internet Money for you.”

Back on 10 May I emailed service@paypal.com.au to ask why all this was happening. I told them that I’m an individual doing business as a sole trader, and have never claimed to be anything different. I received no response. Typical. My PayPal account is now “limited”. Which means frozen.

This morning I’ve contacted PayPal’s compliance team by both email and fax.

You are asking me to prove my tax-exempt charitable or non-profit status. Why? I am not tax-exempt, non-profit or charitable, and have never claimed to be. Never. An email to service@paypal.com.au on this matter dated 10 May went unanswered. Why? Your demand for proof of tax-exempt status does not include the option “But I am not!” Why? I do expect written answers to these “Why?” questions.

I’ll let you know what happens next. Meanwhile, do feel free to vent your own frustration at PayPal in the comments. I daresay I’m not alone here.

Australia’s biggest telco closed down their corporate blog nowwearetalking without warning yesterday — and deleted all the content. While I can understand they want to put the often-controversial forum behind them, I think the move was a mistake.

I’ve already written about this for Crikey, Telstra consigns nowwearetalking to the memory hole. It seems odd to kill NWAT just as it was changing for the better – even more so given there’s no replacement. There’s comments from Stephen Collins and Fake Stephen Conroy, as well as Telstra’s official spokesperson Craig Middleton. It’s free to read. Off you go.

But I’d also like to publish the full interviews I did for that story. So here they are.

Stephen Collins

First, here’s my email interview with Stephen Collins of acidlabs, aka @trib.

What do you think of Telstra’s sudden closure of NWAT?

Obviously, it’s up to them, they own and ran NWAT. But I think the approach taken is incredibly disappointing. It shows that while they have taken some steps in engaging with their community they still don’t get what community is. What they’ve effectively done is bulldoze a four year old village before building a new one. It smacks of paternalism (though I don’t think that’s quite the right word).

What’s wrong with closing it down the way they did, removing content?

By simply closing NWAT, Telstra shows incredible contempt for the people who gave over their time to contribute to the site over the past four years. They fail to realise that by creating a community at NWAT (whatever its shortcomings over the years), they ceded some ownership of that community to its participants. Just shutting NWAT down demonstrates pretty clearly that NWAT as a community and community as a practice at Telstra are actually pretty low on the list of priorities. I find it quite surprising as I know several of the people involved in NWAT and have met and spoken to their senior management. The things they’ve told me in the past don’t point to this type of action. Perhaps the new CEO is ensuring he marks his territory the way he wants it?

Here’s the thing, though. By destroying NWAT and not having something to replace it, and ideally to improve upon it, Telstra leaves a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. So, where will we go to talk about Telstra issues and their community? It’ll be Whirlpool, or somewhere else where Telstra will either simply ignore the issues or have to build significant social capital in order to be engaged with. Just shutting NWAT down is a remarkably short-sighted corporate play.

Of course, despite tanking share prices, Telstra and its management have a swimming pool of money to frolic in, so they can afford to not care about community. As the major telco, they still have the lion’s share of the market and likely will for a long time. They could as easily ignore community as pay the apparent lip service to it that they have. I really hope this backfires on them to show the power of community, but at the moment, they’re probably just too big to care — we’re the gnat trying to annoy the elephant. I hope we’re a big enough gnat.

Any comment on their explanation given at nowwearetalking or with their new temporary blog at telstrablogfeedback.com.au?

It is and looks like a half-baked interim measure. As I’ve said, it’s incredibly short-sighted. It’s great that they’re coming out with something new, but to kill NWAT before the new site was ready is plain dumb and disrespects the community they’ve built. Any failings NWAT had were at least in part offset by the fact that Telstra were engaging with people in some way.

I have to suspect that the death of NWAT is a part of some internal Telstra turf-marking war in the wake of the last of the Trujillo management.

How would you have handled it?

I wouldn’t have done what Telstra has, that’s for sure. I have more respect for my community and the people I talk to than they do, apparently.

I’d have announced the new site, probably on NWAT itself, but I’d have kept NWAT going. The content there has so much value — it represents four years of sometimes useful engagement between a huge corporate and its community. Just imagine what would happen if all the online engagement activities Dell or Microsoft do were just switched off? There’d be uproar. Telstra deserves the same.

Even if Telstra slowly wound NWAT down, reducing activity as they moved to the new site, that would have been so much better.

And they should never, ever have just removed NWAT. By building community there, it no longer belonged just to them. It’s incredibly disrespectful.

Craig Middleton

Craig Middleton is Telstra’s official media spokesperson, on Twitter as @VoxofTLS.

While I understand you might want a change of style or direction, why remove all the content that’s been built up? Doesn’t that lack transparency, and show a lack of respect for the value of people’s contributions?

The conversation moves on. Social media is very much about the now and the future. My understanding is that the National Library in Canberra has archived the site, so that is good from an historical perspective, but it’s a bit like keeping old newspapers and I say that with due respect to the contributions and effort people put into their NWAT contributions.

Why do it suddenly and without any warning, especially when there’s no replacement ready for “months”?

The delay in bringing out NWATs’ replacement is so that we can hear from our customers, stakeholders and social media followers what will be important for them in the next iteration of our social media strategy. Think of it like a big focus group.

Why didn’t you just have kept using the NWAT platform, albeit with less-frequent posts, until the replacement was ready?

It’s a different world for us now. NWAT was part of a different conversation and different approach. It was ground breaking and a milestone in corporate social media engagement, but we now have new management focus for Telstra and all of our communications channels need to reflect this new approach.

There’s speculation that this is part of an attempt to make Telstra look less aggressive, removing the last remnants of the Sol era. As Tim Burrows put it, “[NWAT was so associated wit Phil Burgess and the Sol era that it couldn’t get rid of that stench of propaganda.” Is that a fair summary?

It goes without saying that we want to ensure that our external communications reflect the vision and aims of our management team. David Thodey has made it clear he has a different approach to engaging customers and stakeholders. And there is no argument we intend to remain a leader in corporate engagement through social media.

So there you have it. What do you think?

Episode 41 of Stilgherrian Live is now online for your viewing pleasure — although of course the live chat is a vital part of the experience and you really ought to be watching it live.

The clear winner of “Cnut of the Week” was Andrew Bolt (pictured) with 79% of the vote, for his continuing denialism regarding climate change and for failing to understand that the debate about Internet censorship has moved well past calling everyone a pedophile. His comment on Thursday night’s Q&A drew particular ire.

Well, I think a lot of people are getting very worried about something that hasn’t actually been decided or rolled out. I think it’s incredible and it’s not as if there’s only one right at stake, which is the right to masturbate over photos of children being raped. I mean, that’s not the only right at stake here. There’s another right, and that’s the right to protect children, and I think it all comes down to how does it actually work in practice. And if it does, indeed, do what some of these people are getting hyper about, you know, slow internet speeds by 87 per cent or stop people from looking at legitimate political sites, I’m sure I would bet my bottom dollar that Steve won’t approve it.

We had many fine nominations, but those that made the shortlist were overwhelmed by Bolt’s cnutery. The Leslie Nassar / Fake Stephen Conroy / Telstra debacle received 12% of the votes, then Senator Stephen Conroy on 7% and the German police on a mere 1% for their raid on the Wikileaks volunteer.

The question has been raised: Should Stilgherrian Live move to Friday nights permanently? Whaddyareckon?

Episode 40 of Stilgherrian Live is now online for your viewing pleasure, including the very first interview with Fake Stephen Conroy aka Leslie Nassar.

Nassar, a Telstra employee, outed himself as FSC on Tuesday. Given that Senator Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, oversees telcos like Telstra, this created some complications. He now appears to be over the worst of what sounded like anger Tuesday night.

The phone conversation with Leslie Nassar is just over 12 minutes into the program.

Of course we also had “Cnut of the Week”…

Senators Steve Fielding (16%) and Stephen Conroy (18%) didn’t do as well as they usually did, thanks to strong competition from Telstra (20%) for supposedly mishandling the outing of Leslie Nassar. However the clear winner was the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) with 45% of the votes for trying to keep their secret blacklist secret. Or something.

Personally I wouldn’t blame the public servants for implementing the silly policies of their political masters, but then you make the nominations and ultimate vote. So there it is. I am your slave.

Beer. Yes, it needs to be said. Beer. More precisely, beer and geeks. Many of both. This is my clearest memory of yesterday’s PodCamp in Perth. Other memories may return shortly, once coffee and udon work their magic. Many brain cells will not. I bid them a fond farewell.

Nick Hodge has posted a much better lead photo for PodCamp Perth, showing Cameron Reilly’s passionate opening keynote, replete with a vast image of Che Guevara. It helped me feel more comfortable using an image of Joseph Goebbels in my own session.

I’ll explain the Goebbels reference when I post a version of my presentation. I’d prefer to post something of lasting value, not a raw dump, so it might take a couple of days. Plus I want to continue the dialogue I started about social media and the federal election.

I’m also writing a piece for Crikey tomorrow, and I’ll post a version here too.

I won’t bother listing the sessions. Nick and others have already written their initial impressions, including Cameron Reilly and Simone van Hattem and Michael Minutillo… I’ll complete all the linkage later too.

But for now, a rest and a read before catching up with people at the Belgian Beer Cafe. Yes, beer. Again.