instance

Is it just me?

I just lost our paypal account for my company just by deleting an old phone number in the settings and adding a new one. After logging out there is no way to log back in, they refer me to their hotline.

A similar thing happened years ago when they introduced 2-factor, I never got that account back since I simply couldn't get through on their hotline. I had a private account with an old number, they introduced 2-factor and I missed their emails about it, and when I tried to login later, I was basically locked out.

Honestly we don't need Paypal in my company. So I guess I will heavily advocate against it in any companies I own or work in going forward.

Two months ago I posted a list of 61 QUBO formulations and cited every single one (which resulted in 33 links to papers) [0]. After seeing this post get crawled by Google, my traffic dropped permanently by more than 50%. It has also stopped growing (which it did before). Of course, afterwards I noticed my mistake (I suppose Google thought I had become somewhat of a 'link spamming' site?!). Hindsight is 20/20. But I refuse to remove this page, since I find it extremely resourceful and use it all the time in projects (I work on a Quantum Computing startup) and to send that list to others.

I guess the point of this post is two-fold:

1. What does HN think about Google aggressively deranking people due to one simple mistake? Could others share their stories?

2. Is there anything I can do to get back my original traffic without removing this post? Should I remove the links and just keep the text citation? Did I fuck up permanently, with Google flagging my site or something?

Appreciate any input.

[0]: https://blog.xa0.de/post/List-of-QUBO-formulations/