there are times when an allegory can get no more perfect.
this is one of those times.
the powerful partisan lean of gofundme has been on display for years. they will happily raise money for CHAZ/CHOP or for bail for people who loot best buys and burn car dealerships, but not for actual peaceful people seeking their own freedom.
this odd affinity for breakers over makers seems to be a core value.
i mean, they pushed CHOP farming as though it was a real thing and not 5 sad plants that made the charlie brown christmas tree look fit for rockefeller center.
but they will not honor your desire to fund freedom.
more astonishing, they tried to literally take $9 million in collected funds to donate to causes they would select themselves. given their track record it seems quite likely these would be causes outright antithetical to the trucker convoy for which they were intended.
this is like trying to donate to animal rescue initiatives and winding up funding furriers.
this whole “refund upon request” scam is just pretext to do so. they know damn well that most people will not do so or even know that their funds were diverted.
this is such a perfect and gorgeous allegory for so much of the authoritarian impulse of the collectivist left: we take your stuff on pretext, then do with it as we, not you see fit.
imagine the stunning arrogance to even try this and the towering entitlement to choose: “we’ll reallocate your money unless you ask for it back” instead of automatically returning it.
i mean, look, gofund me is a private company. i respect their right to allow those they choose and only those they choose to use their service. freedom is about respecting the right of others to exercise their agency in way that you may not like.
but such actions have consequences, and let’s be sure they face some. what they tried to do was astonishingly unethical and they only changed course because of the massive storm of protest and bad press around it.
we saw what you did, we have the receipts, and we’ll make sure others see it to so that they can make informed choices about whether or not you are someone they can trust or do business with.
you do you.
and we’ll do us.
this sort of public outcry is the thing these would be nannies fear most.
so up the volume.
this is how we generate the desire and the energy to build the alternate systems that will better serve our needs. a free market will handle all this, but it needs signals of what we want.
so tell it.
loudly.
vote with your voices, vote with your feet, vote with your wallets.
support the new systems that rise to take the place of these walled gardens of curated ideology.
this, my seminal substack, applies every bit as much to commerce as to speech. it’s all the same thing. it’s all your agency, your right to decide, and your ability to do as you will, consensually.
there is no one you can trust with something as big as your access to discourse and to commerce.
and so we must evolve to systems that do not require trust.
we must move to the new internet, the decentralized internet, the public square that is owned by no one, controlled by no one.
let’s render the very idea of censorship and of the interruption of consensual commerce anachronistic, for freedom lies in self reliance, not in convoluted permission.
if we do not take this power into our own hands, ever shall it be wielded over us by others.
today is just the start of that oppression and suppression.
Before I ever saw that GFM had backtracked, I had read an article saying that they were stealing the money. Within ten minutes I had already requested a refund, disputed the charge with my cc account (under the "services not delivered" clause), and gone to GiveSendGo where I donated 5x my original amount. I would love to see others up their donations, too. Here's the link.
Oh, and just to make a little more work for GFM, I also requested a refund via the refund link that the weasels finally emailed out. I won't take two refunds from them if they accidentally honor (I almost laughed typing that word in relation to GFM) both requests , I actually have some ethics, but I will happily let them spend the resources to sort the requests properly.
One more thing - I use DuckDuckGo and Brave, but made sure to use Safari and then go to Google and type in "How to get refund from Go Fund Me for donation stolen from trucker convoy" and "How to donate to trucker convoy via GiveSendGo". It's a tiny thing, but I do this every time I want to make a point to these companies since they live and die by their search data. This is one way to let them know they are losing, slowly but surely
Excellent comment, and thanks for using Brave. We have our own search engine too now, with its own index, which you can make default in Brave’s settings / search engines panel. URL is search.brave.com.
Good of you to try to train Google’s algorithm, too :-). With Brave Search, if you also enable Web Discovery Project in settings, your anonymized use helps grow the index we build.
Note: DDG is a Bing front end, they do not have their own index.
Basically if a site is not working, click the little lion in your address bar and turn off shields (though question how important that site is, why would it not work if your shields are not up?!?). Other than that, it basically is super easy to use and actually find it much more user friendly than any other browser out there. Remembering passwords ACTUALLY WORKS on this browser!!!
yes. brendan and i have been friends (and gatopals™) for some time our chats on privacy and a distributed internet have influenced my thinking significantly.
I’m loving Brave! Heard about it from Joe Rogan in his talk with Dr. Robert Epstein and downloaded it immediately. I had just discovered who’s on the Firefox board and was looking for an alternative. Thank you for providing it!
I have put the link mentioned above for Brave as a bookmarks bar item on Google LOL I had no idea how to make it my favorite. My google account does the search with Yahoo would you believe. No matter how many times I try to change it in the settings, every time I start up there is that crap again.
Just last night I heard about Brave for the first time... now I'm seeing it everywhere. Downloaded it and putting it to constant use. I had been Firefox and with robust anti-ad and anti-tracking, etc., but Brave has been so highly recommended. I'm very grateful.
Good switch. You may not have been aware that Brendan Eich co-founded Mozilla, the company that makes Firefox, but was hounded out of the company in 2014 by proto-woke activists who were mad that he made a small donation to a cause they disagreed with. I used to be a user of both Firefox and Thunderbird (Mozilla's email client) but dropped them like a rabid hamster once I heard how Eich had been forced out.
Thanks for Brave. I've been using it with Yandex because of duck duck go's front end. Look forward to reading about your search engine and giving it a test drive.
Yes. Someone above writes to search brave.com and download it there. I’m not very tech savvy but I’m going to check out what Brendan Eich commented above about the index and web discovery project.
Truly a horrible thing what Firefox did to smear your reputation. Use Brave all the time to prevent ad dollars going to sites that don't deserve it. Any possible chance you can bring the playlist feature to the desktop?
Does anyone know specifically who will distribute the funds? I plan to donate, but I just heard about the crap with GoFUndMe. F them. I’ll keep reading…..
I heard some canadian broadcast where they mentioned some of the funds for the truckers were coming from sources in the US... I can't remember the actual wording, but it was said in such a way as to imply that it was evil outside forces, sort of like "Russian interference in elections". Good God, they have nothing new in their playbooks.
We did the same - 10X original amount - no one is going to tell us who we can and can not support. I am especially going to enjoy Monday this week when I call the political party we usually donate to and let them know that this year 100% of our donations went to truckers instead!!
Thanks for all the excellent info! I was holding off on donating once I started hearing about GFM’s (or GFY) initial shenanigans last week… appreciate the new link and knowing that GSG exists!
I gave $25 through GFM. Did all the same things. FINALLY got through all the bot and DDOS attacks and gave $300 to the truckers and $30 to GiveSendGo since they don’t swipe off the top. The truckers are going to need an army of lawyers. I hope people keep donating. It’s turning into what we knew it would.
Ashamed of our government and the citizens willing to still vote for them going forward. The Truckers are not a fringe minority but represent a significant portion of our populace - and it will be much more so as more people wake up to discover just how badly they have been lied to!
It’s not going to end without sacrifice. The question now that the executable has come is will Canadians hide or stand with the truckers? I haven’t a clue…..
Yeah, I wish somehow we could have gotten the word out to all the donors and have them issue chargebacks and request refunds like you did. I am guessing they would have been inundated. Not good to have thousands of chargebacks filed against you.
Maybe GFM's actions will wake up more people. I certainly hope so!
Thank you for spreading the word about GiveSendGo!
My pleasure! Hopefully, a few people on here will read about asking the cc companies for chargebacks and will follow through on that same line of recourse. As a business owner, I know what a pain in the tail it is to have a chargeback filed against you. They require time and manpower, no matter whether you are proving your innocence or fixing your mistake.
I just typed in givesendgo.com (to go directly to the home page) and that's giving a 502 error, as well. So hopefully, it's just a tech or traffic issue and not more fuckery.
A 502 error implies that the load balancing servers at GSG aren't able to handle the traffic. Often happens when a site gets much greater than design loads. I'm sure they are busily trying to fix it. Meanwhile wait a day and try again.
You don't need to wait around, hoping. The real reason they changed their tune is a lot of donors immediately disputed the charge with their banks. Every chargeback costs gfm $15.
I switched to Proton Mail just because of that. I used gmail for over a decade, but I’m not going to allow them to screen my Mail that they disapprove of.
So do I. There will come a day when they use their massive information gathering not for marketing, but to help the deep state identify us deplorables. They are probably doing it now.
Keep trying, is all I can say. You will be able to get on eventually, and the truckers (and all freedom lovers) will be so grateful for your persistence.
Same for me. I also tried to donate through another fundraiser Jeff Childers's Coffee & Covid sent around this morning, https://www.givesendgo.com/Warroomcanadanet, but I'm getting an error message when trying to donate through that one too. Will keep trying.
Not sure why this is happening but when I clicked on the link above a got a 502 Error message. Then I tried www.givesendgo.com and got the same message. I hop this is because the site is really, really busy rather than being messed with by the dark side of the force.
It is. They had a statement on their twitter last night asking for people to keep trying to get through - they are having difficulty keeping up with the deluge of donations coming in. We tried 3 times before getting through - and over that time the funds went up by over $100,000!
Starve the Beast on all fronts. I de-Googled my life completely about a year ago and now pay for encrypted email (ProtonMail or TutaMail is a great choice). Use Brave and Brave search engine for browser and search. Do not use Amazon, FB, Instagram, Twitter, nothing. Contribute to great Gatos on Substack and buy as much food as possible locally from the farmers. This is the way forward.
I also used to use Vivaldi, but since it used the chrome engines, it felt too googley for me. I switched to Brave and it turns out I was right to do so.
This is not the first time goFme has done this to a cause I supported, so I knew it was a mistake when they first set up with goFme. I was hoping for the best but expecting the worst, as it were.
I don't know if anyone has discussed this , but last night there was a strategy being sent all over social media for donors to request a refund NOT through the goFme site, but rather by filing a dispute with the bank . cc company so that along with the refund, goFme would be forced to pay a ~$15 processing fee. Times tha by 120,000 donors and that is substantial.
Greater minds than mine on here would be able to tell me the likelihood of success of this strategy, but I have to believe that given goFme's change of heart to issue refunds automatically that it must have at least had some chance of working.
The truckers seem to have relocated to gab, which is the right choice. The platform is funded by users and it has already shown, with actions and words of the founder Andrew Torba, that it can be trusted. In January apparently they got 85 million page views against 70 million 2 months ago so it's growing - unlike the nastiest competitor, Facebook, that finally lost users. Although not as good, Rumble and Gettr are also increasing. The Youtube policy about Covid (see the latest article from the Brownstone institute for an anaylsis) is self-harm on the altar of bootlicking to the Government. I hope that one of the core issues of 2022 will be the rise of alternative small tech platforms and that there will be more crashes for big tech - Google you are next. Only a matter of time.
They also started https://givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022, but the site is currently buckling under demand. Which is good 🙂. Gab is awesome, as is El Gato. He's my fav substack by far.
From what I've heard about their willingness to censor, perhaps they are a more direct copy of Twitter than one might want. Maybe they're okay, and I'm on both, but I prefer Gab.
Makes you wonder how long they have been skimming $ off of "good causes".....I was just going to donate to a friend who rescues horses. Maybe I will just send her a check in the mail instead.
Definitely. The one mistake made by the Trucker Convoy was using gofu**me. I broke ties with that organization years ago. I can't wait to see them on the list of businesses that failed and went bankrupt due to the "pandemic".
I thought so too, but now I see how it was the best inadvertent decision ever. The cause will get even more funding AND help shine more light on another delusional piece of the crumbling bedrock of shame. Let freedom ring (or HONK)!!
Site is really slow, and someone said they might be experiencing a denial-of-service attack, but I was able to donate just now. It took a LOT of time between screens.
For me, too, and that was about an hour ago. I had to disable my VPN, and then it went through. Visa immediately texted me about a "possible fraudulent charge", which they did not do when I donated via GFM. Interesting...
I thought that same thing. People do seem to still be getting on the site for now. This is probably the best thing to ever happen to GiveSendGo. They should send a thank you card to GFM for being such weasels.
I'v been trying to give since last night. Finally got almost all the way through but it got stuck on confirming it an hour ago. I'm sure this is a level of traffic they have never experienced and weren't prepared for. I just hope it's not sabotage.
You defund these platforms by not using them. Don’t watch woke sports events or buy the products advertised on their events. Suckaturd lost billions because people stopped using his Fakebook platform. Vote your conscience with your wallet.
Exactly! Over the years I have had so many friends that complain about products, websites, etc and the first question I ask is, "why are you still buying from/using them then?" People have been duped into thinking that doing something so easy and simple can't make a difference. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We have an internet but few understand that the site you visit must pay for the pipe that allows you access. For a popular site that gets a lot of traffic, that pipe must become large along with service costs to match. https://givesendgo.com/ likely was sized for typical traffic but has discovered too many people are arriving now. I do hope they prosper because thy have been the only reliable way to help the J6 political prisoners.
How many posting here still have Amazon accounts and shovel cash into Bezos' pockets? Get off, cancel you Amazon Chase CC (they tried pushing Gen Flynn off) and buy from smaller, preferably local sellers. Who cares if you pay a few bucks extra. Economic power is something we can all wield.
FWIW: to avoid giving Amazon my money, I now use them as simply a search engine and a wish list. I have found, once you have decided on a product, that if you ‘brave’ the manufacturer, you can many times buy direct from the source. Most times I have found that the price is lower and they charge for shipping but together it adds up to the same price as on Amazon.
We have a few boxes, as little people, to stand firmly on and assert our humanity:
1. The #BallotBox, effective mainly at the local level, and especially so, because many decisions at that level are made with only a handful of votes.
2. The #CashBox, gold, silver, cryptocurrency for peer-to-peer exchange, and its converse the #boycott to deny our support to institutions and corporations inimical to human freedom,
3. The #JuryBox where nullification of unjust laws & regulations can be effected by jurors; by holding elected officials accountable through their bonds; or, by legally challenging the state of emergency. A powerful check on Leviathan's growth has been the assertion of #StatesRights in areas specifically not enumerated to the federal government in the US Constitution, e.g. gun laws. I've been boycotting air travel from the US in the hope that someday the egregious groping and grasping will be halted through a legal challenge.
4. The #PulpitBox, the voice of freedom, to expouse and discuss and challenge the woke narrative. This includes reinforcing families & building community through rezoning for multiple use structures, creating microschools, supporting homeschooling, etc.
5. The #LunchBox, because nutrition with healthy, natural foods devoid of sugar and seed oils is the key to metabolic health, which in turn allows healthspan to match lifespan. Metabolic health also allows #deprescription and freedom from the #PillBox mentality to cure ills.
6. And there's our last line of defense, the #AmmoBox. Could Australia have covid camps without previously forcibly disarming its denizens (denied citizens)? Do you think that 11.4 million deer hunters in the US are not a deterrent to a similar scheme here?
Wow just wow. I'm not surprised they won't release the funds, but to try and direct them elsewhere is unconscionable. I hope after everyone gets their money returned, they voice loud and clear to NEVER use Gofundme again.
GoFundMe is owned by PayPal who also is big on closing people’s accounts and keeping the money. In early days of my nonprofit I was set up on GoFundMe but they never could figure out (insert the eye roll emoji here) how to send the funds to my bank so I’d get a check months later. When they were bought by PayPal, with whom I’d had not good experiences, I left and have never done anything on that platform again. The truckers have a campaign on a new platform set up now so hopefully people will know and get their money back (one day….) from GoFundMe. They’re scam artists of the highest order.
Yep, I stopped using PayPal some months ago. Not that I did much with them, but they're #DeadToMe now. (And their reports are so ass-backwards and user-unfriendly to the nth degree.)
Agreed! I do have it as an option for my nonprofit donors on my 2 donation platforms and maybe 2-3 who use it. (It annoys the crap out of me that I have to "request" the money every time. Hello - send the damn money!) But for people living overseas it can be the only way some can donate. But I *never* use it personally.
If a client *asks* whether I accept PayPal, I will say yes. But my invoices tell them that I take CCs, checks, Apple Pay, Cash App (though I think they're no good, because of their affiliation with I can't remember whom, so I may scotch this one), Zelle, and Venmo.
Corporate America keeps effing us in so many ways, that I'm sure some of those I listed that I DO accept are just as bad as PayPal and Cash App.
It's hard because you definitely want to make it as easy as possible for customers/donors to pay. Venmo is actually owned by paypal as well though. We do use it, just because it's how everyone sends money. But mostly just to/from our kids, a pet sitter, and one other service.
Thankfully, Venmo is rarely (if ever...can't recall any client using Venmo) used. So I'll scrap that one as well. In my family, the predominant means are Zelle and Apple Pay. And with clients is either CC or check.
Still can't comprehend how they could use GoFuckMe in the first place: how could one b so NAIVE!!? Just like the US Truckers getting their Fakebook group deleted!
Apart from getting screwed by LeftTech, u already should stop using them to stop feeding the monster: ALWAYS use NewTech! Boycott BigTech/BigMedia/BigCorporate that r kidnapped by (or pandering to) the left!
Same here, and I didn't donate for that reason. GFM was always going to bend them over. In the end it's probably good they did, it caused more outrage and woke a few more people up to what's really happening.
Like so many other left extremists (the two tend to be interchangeable now), this action by GoFundMe is, at least to me, plain illegal. I would like to see the Freedom Convoy donors money not only returned, but the GFM platform shut down and its bosses behind bars.
Jim Watson, Mayor of Ottawa, is behind this mis-appropriation of funds, he had even called for money to be seized and given to Ottawa to pay for costs. Watson also orchestrated with tax payers money the booking of most hotel rooms in Ottawa to prevent visitors with instructions not to re-rent empty rooms. One of the top donors of the new funding campaign chose as display name none else but Jim Watson, for $2000.
Wonder how the local taxpayers feel about his actions? I understand that in early days only 30% of those polled supported the truckers. Have no idea now, but suspect support has increased as people become aware of the government continued overreach. For some reason liberals always overreach imagining their policies successful.
That's what I said on their Twitter, only I abbreviated it GFY. Then I attached the picture from this Substack, and, I provided the link to this Substack.
GiveSendGo shows $750,000 already. not too bad. hope some of that gets to the truckers. if I was local, I'd just go give my $30 to an actual trucker -- cash.
Now this is interesting. Sometime back, on one of his podcasts, Brett Weinstein said his solution to the vaccine was to have Musk buy out the vaccine-makers to stop with the junk. If money is what they want, Musk would have the means to get it to them.
I didn't think this was the best idea, because rarely do people in power only want money. They want glory, they want a legacy, they want a treasured place in the history books. I can imagine Albert Bourla (Pfizer CEO) telling his great-grandchildren he had led Pfizer when it created the mRNA cure for cancer.
A better idea, I think, would be to have Musk build his own social media platforms, browsers, servers and all, using content-neutral administration. Might be part of legacy he could be proud of.
Conquest's Second Law of Politics: Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.
So Musk building Muskbook and Twitmusk and MuskBrowser and MuskSearch is a good idea, but it would only work for a while; probably only as long as Musk himself is paying attention to it.
You keep making it, I'll keep following you there.
Unfortunately at this moment every alternative (apparently not Substack--yet) comes with its own to me unwanted ideology. I joined GETTR only because the wannabe killer shrike banned Robert Malone, but I certainly don't like the people behind it. I'm glad there's an apparently thriving alternative to GFM, but its explicitly Christian ethos displeases me. Over and over, I find there's no genuinely free-thought-filled space for me to rest my more--irritated-every-moment head.
Agree with you but have never commented on the "Christian" slant many of the sites use...I too can overlook it but it does not please me either. Hard to find any site that is "free?" of having to say.....except this and this etc etc. Everyone here pretty sure of the GiveSendGo site for the truckers? I sent to the GFM site but even when I did so I was skeptical they would allow the donations to continue....and now not surprised they halted them. It will be tough to go against the establishment herd mentality...government.... sociopaths and psychopaths with money, therefore power.
And I finally joined that bloody shrike only because there are those--like Alexandros Marinos--who say things I really want to hear, and in honesty, getting cranky because a site stopped letting me read it without joining is a childish tantrum. It is their property after all. We teh people have no free virtual public square and that is the greatest danger.
To clarify those deletions were for GoFundMe. GiveSendGo is smaller, maybe newer. Should find out more about ownership, public or private status, past history.
I would be more comfortable if GiveSendGo were broadly multi-denominational of all religions. Otherwise MSM paints any funded campaign as fundamental or radical Christian, etc.
The other side of the coin of "evolving systems we can trust" is to abandon those we can no longer trust. For years I have been hoping that a nationalist / America First patriot-patron with leadership chops would organize a nationwide boycott of leftwing corporations, non-profits, and other sundry organizations. Someone with a megaphone, some sharp IT professionals, and a staff of researchers could set up a website ("Fight Fire With Fire"?) and relentlessly publicize and call attention to leftwing operations that deserve to be starved. I could see website features like 1) email and phone contact information for the corporate C-suite officers 2) "Hit Them Where They Advertise" 3) "Target of The Week" and 4) Right-Thinking Alternative Businesses.
We need a sort of rightwing Southern Poverty Law Center / Sleeping Giants to catalog left wingers that need to be boycotted and otherwise shunned. The right has been shy about punishing left-leaning businesses because Muh Capitalism, but sites like GoFu**Me have long proven that they are hopelessly partisan. Why is any non-leftist still using them? Stop complaining about the malfeasance of the left. We outnumber them, but we lack the weapons and the leadership for what is turning into an existential struggle on this critical battlefield. And when the cause is important enough (ending vaccine and mask mandates--especially for children!), Fight Fire With Fire could also easily be extended into organizing nationwide general strikes. We have the power. We just don't have the power switch.
We have a few boxes, as little people, to stand firmly on and assert our humanity:
1. The #BallotBox, effective mainly at the local level, and especially so, because many decisions at that level are made with only a handful of votes.
2. The #CashBox, gold, silver, cryptocurrency for peer-to-peer exchange, and its converse the #boycott to deny our support to institutions and corporations inimical to human freedom,
3. The #JuryBox where nullification of unjust laws & regulations can be effected by jurors; by holding elected officials accountable through their bonds; or, by legally challenging the state of emergency. A powerful check on Leviathan's growth has been the assertion of #StatesRights in areas specifically not enumerated to the federal government in the US Constitution, e.g. gun laws. I've been boycotting air travel from the US in the hope that someday the egregious groping and grasping will be halted through a legal challenge.
4. The #PulpitBox, the voice of freedom, to expouse and discuss and challenge the woke narrative. This includes reinforcing families & building community through rezoning for multiple use structures, creating microschools, supporting homeschooling, etc.
5. The #LunchBox, because nutrition with healthy, natural foods devoid of sugar and seed oils is the key to metabolic health, which in turn allows healthspan to match lifespan. Metabolic health also allows #deprescription and freedom from the #PillBox mentality to cure ills.
6. And there's our last line of defense, the #AmmoBox. Could Australia have covid camps without previously forcibly disarming its denizens (denied citizens)? Do you think that 11.4 million deer hunters in the US are not a deterrent to a similar scheme here?
And just FTR, there are millions of additional 2A supporters in America who *aren't* hunters. There are MANY of us...I mean...of them, many of them, out there.
In that vein, you can use the site https://www.2ndvote.com/ to help sort through companies and decide which you feel you want to support with your consumer dollars.
I know about 2ndvote. I just think their criteria is obviously way out of whack. They are definitely not America First! If you look at their Good/Bad Actors you will find Catholic Charities listed under "Good." I am Catholic but I cannot imagine a more pernicious, anti-American organization. They are one of the USG's largest social services subcontractors that is happy to feed, protect, and transport illegal aliens around the country. Were I the governor of a state, I would charge them with felony accessory to human trafficking and not allow them to operate within my state.
The "the Constitution is not a suicide pact" truism can be altered and be just as true: Capitalism is not a suicide pact.
F the entities and institutions who would - and ARE - using the Constitution or the free market to destroy the Constitution, the free market, and freedom and liberty itself.
It’s correct to call out the proposed reallocation as outrageous but it is just as outrageous for them to withhold funds from the truckers on a sham rationale.
GoFundMe is acting tyrannically to prop up fake news reports and questionable police reports, that paint all the truckers and their movement with the brush of an unrepresentative few, as an excuse to interfere with donations.
The "it's a private company they can do what they want" argument is overused and not necessarily true especially if there are user agreements or if there is misrepresentation. Has someone checked whether the EUA agreement says ‘we can choose to withhold any and all funds at any time for any reason, and choose not to give the money raised to the campaign owner ever’.
Can UPS decide not to deliver a package once it has been accepted and paid for political reasons , or even for a reason that the person is alleged to have been involved in a crime or even convicted?
Can a bank choose not to clear a validly made check by the payor to the payee for political reasons, or even for a reason that the person is alleged to have been involved in a crime or even convicted?
Agreed, I think "respecting private companies rights" is way overrated. It is the exact argument that many red state legislatures used to sit on their hands and not pass legislation against the vaccine mandates. Using this 11th Commandment of many "conservatives" makes someone like Kristi Noem a hero and Ron Desantis a villain.
The left is only using it now because it's convenient, they don't actually believe it. If they did, they wouldn't be trying to shut down Substack for the sin of hosting people who have been kicked off Twitter.
I liked the first version of the comment as well (The Jungle). This extreme belief in the principle clouds consideration of other important factors, witness the whole issue about social media companies as public forums vs. private publishers (editorial control), and the section 230 protections from liability.
The comment about "five sad plants" in CHAZ/CHOP has me laughing out loud. I walked through CHAZ during it's 2-week heyday, out of curiosity, and can assure you it couldn't have been more than 5 sad plants. 😆😭😆
I cancelled my BBC TV Licence Direct Debit over 3 years ago. Never looked back. Never had a visit (and if you do, just shut the door, no need to say anything). I use the threatening letters as firelighters.
Trudope doesn’t get it, the more he pushes, the harder the resistance and it is all downhill for him from here on.... He has met more than his match in the FreedomConvoy which has raised over a million dollars in 12 hours. Now the government is stopping all the hotels from honouring the bookings, by sequestering the rooms with taxpayer dollars. This will not be a happy ending for him.
This is spot on -- I've never been on FB or IG, etc.
Something odd about Substack, however, is every time I add a new writer to my subscription, the next thing that pops up is something about tweeting this. Why is that? It seems to go against the whole concept of Substack to me -- "subscribe to us and tell the world on the one-party fascist Twitter site."
A special note regarding Twitter: I used to be able to read a tweet thread if linked to an article but the last month or so within 20 seconds of going to that tweet thread, a pop-up blocks my view. This pop-up wants me to join or sign into Twitter to read that thread. I have no plans to join that site or to let them know who I am in my Brave VPN-cloaked world. So Substack writers who link to Twitter threads should be aware that perhaps many other Substack readers are like me and avoid these big-tech sites.
I was lucky enough to donate via GSG first thing this morning in the UK, before the website crashed under the weight of donations ( https://www.givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022 )
And yes, I more than doubled my initial donation. FU GFM . Get Woke, Go Broke.
Honestly, who is the doofus who even started this GoFundMe? Have they been under a rock? GoFundMe has already screwed over so many conservative fundraisers, it’s appalling. Go use GiveSendGo who makes the fee optional and not mandatory. GoFundMe deserves to burn in hell attempting to steal people’s money.
GoFundMe debacle further disclosure. Needed to be exposed. Will generate more attention and commitment to get past the global tyrannical takeover. Think everyday about what we spend our money on, to what vendor, and on what platform we spend the money. If everyone was mindful and made adjustments the mass of minor individual alterations in financial decisions would make enormous change. For the now, some purchases can just be delayed to make a statement.
Yep, I've been considering my own choices in these matters, and making adjustments where I choose to spend. Alongside those choices, I'm also considering the privacy issues surveillance capitalism thrives on. Lots of things to think about; lots of habits and behaviors to change.
I am listening to an interview of RFK Jr. by Foster Gamble who is asking him the personal questions--how do you cope, what do you think you can do that matters. He says to start your own personal reset each morning anew, focus on how to be a better person daily, and to spend your efforts on the things under your control and for which you might have reasonable influence. Consider staying constructive and compassionate in comments and reactions. Remember the astonishing range of people participating in the same freedom movement--plenty of who have been historically center or left, rejecting whatever this newer left has become.
It’s baby steps, I know, but I closed my Twitter account several years ago, canceled Amazon Prime a few years ago and now don’t buy from them ever, at all, quit using Facebook last year, switched to Brave a few years ago, and just recently got ProtonMail.
I know there are still woke companies I use (dammit Visa) but I’m trying.
Why do groups keep having to learn this lesson? Every single time a group or person with a hint of the wrong type of views starts one it gets screwed with. How about people use common sense and remember what happened last time?
click on link "complete this form" and spam them with fukking.thieves@gofundme.suckdis, or whatever your imagination comes up with. we get the bonus of getting their system churning out errors that will be checked by human resources. win-win!! :D
Just in case you missed it-Did you know if you dispute the donation to gfm with your bank/CC they will be charged a $15 dispute fee. They want you to click the refund link because then there will be no fees. What they don't want is 120,000 (amt of donors) $15 fees! Just sayin'
Ding ding! I've been telling people for years that the permissionless aspect of crypto was a major selling point. "But I have Paypal already.................."
All of leftism can be encapsulated in one sentence:
"Hand over your stuff and do what I tell you or my thugs will throw you in a cage and kill you if you resist."
They believe they own you, everything you possess and even your children. They have murdered some 150 million souls in the last century or so and oppressed, impoverished and displaced countless millions more. They have destroyed every society and economy they've seized control of, without exception.
Leftism as a political force must be humiliated and defeated if we are to regain our civilization.
"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!"
How are we supposed to use our right to protest when the 'leaders' will simply declare any such protest illegal and cut off all support? And more importantly -- are the 'leaders' doing this on purpose to escalate the situation?
The problem with respecting the right of private companies to make choices we might not agree with is that the entire system that "legitimizes" private companies to participate in the "economy" are entirely the purview of one particular belief system. So bake my cake you bigot.
Before I ever saw that GFM had backtracked, I had read an article saying that they were stealing the money. Within ten minutes I had already requested a refund, disputed the charge with my cc account (under the "services not delivered" clause), and gone to GiveSendGo where I donated 5x my original amount. I would love to see others up their donations, too. Here's the link.
https://www.givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022/donate
Oh, and just to make a little more work for GFM, I also requested a refund via the refund link that the weasels finally emailed out. I won't take two refunds from them if they accidentally honor (I almost laughed typing that word in relation to GFM) both requests , I actually have some ethics, but I will happily let them spend the resources to sort the requests properly.
One more thing - I use DuckDuckGo and Brave, but made sure to use Safari and then go to Google and type in "How to get refund from Go Fund Me for donation stolen from trucker convoy" and "How to donate to trucker convoy via GiveSendGo". It's a tiny thing, but I do this every time I want to make a point to these companies since they live and die by their search data. This is one way to let them know they are losing, slowly but surely
Excellent comment, and thanks for using Brave. We have our own search engine too now, with its own index, which you can make default in Brave’s settings / search engines panel. URL is search.brave.com.
Good of you to try to train Google’s algorithm, too :-). With Brave Search, if you also enable Web Discovery Project in settings, your anonymized use helps grow the index we build.
Note: DDG is a Bing front end, they do not have their own index.
Brendan Eich in the house! Your Real Vision interview was incredible. Thank you for building Brave. I'm using it right now
Is there a link available for this interview? 🌳
https://www.realvision.com/shows/the-interview-crypto/videos/brave-browser-taking-back-control-of-your-data
Found it by searching in Brave. :)
Thank you.
Wow. The Brave people read bad cattitude too? Now I trust Brave even more - a rare real world affirmation of my judgement.
I love seeing these connections! So reaffirming.
Sorry to ask...but does Brave have a " Installation and use for Dummies" link. Asking for a...well yeah, ok...I'm asking for me.
Go to brave.com, click on "download brave" and start using it.
It behaves a lot like Chrome, but with extra features and less evilness. (They also have a help center explaining the extra features.)
Basically if a site is not working, click the little lion in your address bar and turn off shields (though question how important that site is, why would it not work if your shields are not up?!?). Other than that, it basically is super easy to use and actually find it much more user friendly than any other browser out there. Remembering passwords ACTUALLY WORKS on this browser!!!
Wait, are you really Brandon Eich? Thanks for all you do! We appreciate you!
yes. brendan and i have been friends (and gatopals™) for some time our chats on privacy and a distributed internet have influenced my thinking significantly.
great guy, great resource.
all bad cattitudes are written on brave browsers.
My favorite thing about Brave is that you took the tyrants’ own tool and modified it and it’s now being used against them. Delicious.
I’m loving Brave! Heard about it from Joe Rogan in his talk with Dr. Robert Epstein and downloaded it immediately. I had just discovered who’s on the Firefox board and was looking for an alternative. Thank you for providing it!
Been using Brave for a long time now. Appreciate your courage, innovation and productivity!
I have put the link mentioned above for Brave as a bookmarks bar item on Google LOL I had no idea how to make it my favorite. My google account does the search with Yahoo would you believe. No matter how many times I try to change it in the settings, every time I start up there is that crap again.
Just last night I heard about Brave for the first time... now I'm seeing it everywhere. Downloaded it and putting it to constant use. I had been Firefox and with robust anti-ad and anti-tracking, etc., but Brave has been so highly recommended. I'm very grateful.
Good switch. You may not have been aware that Brendan Eich co-founded Mozilla, the company that makes Firefox, but was hounded out of the company in 2014 by proto-woke activists who were mad that he made a small donation to a cause they disagreed with. I used to be a user of both Firefox and Thunderbird (Mozilla's email client) but dropped them like a rabid hamster once I heard how Eich had been forced out.
Agree, Firefox is woke mess
Best browser since Netscape Navigator 1.0.
Thanks for everything mate.
Just made Brave my default search engine…Thanks.
real men use only brave search
Thanks for Brave. I've been using it with Yandex because of duck duck go's front end. Look forward to reading about your search engine and giving it a test drive.
I did not know about Brave, but I admire your principles. Firefox's loss is the Internet's gain. Ummmmm.... Let's go, Brendan ;)
I remember when it all happened:
https://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/new-mozilla-add-ons-t13821.html
I switched to Pale Moon - Firefox engine without the politics - I'll try Brave
I use Brave exclusively; thanks for the tips.
can you use brave on your iphone?
Yes. Someone above writes to search brave.com and download it there. I’m not very tech savvy but I’m going to check out what Brendan Eich commented above about the index and web discovery project.
Truly a horrible thing what Firefox did to smear your reputation. Use Brave all the time to prevent ad dollars going to sites that don't deserve it. Any possible chance you can bring the playlist feature to the desktop?
Brave search enabled! Along with the Web Discover Project (which I normally would never participate in on any other platform).
I just found it! An add on! Yay! Thank you for prompting me to look further.
I did the same thing--doubled the amount to GiveSendGo
It was @ $760,000 at 8:45 but as people woke up it’s getting hammered again.
All I hear outside my hotel are HOOONK HOOOONK. 🇨🇦🚛🇨🇦
Today is going to be good!
HONK HONK!
The honking breaks into tune every few minutes. Awesome
There it goes again!
📢📢📢📢📢
Scrub that. It’s incessant now!!! Hoooooooooonk 📢📢🇨🇦🇨🇦🚛
Admire you guys. I know it is not easy to put up with noise and thank you from the bottom of my heart.
The Wild Geese!!!
its over 1 m now...
Does anyone know specifically who will distribute the funds? I plan to donate, but I just heard about the crap with GoFUndMe. F them. I’ll keep reading…..
https://www.givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022/donate
Looks like they're getting hammered with traffic. First attempt was blocked by Cloudflare, but it worked when I tried again a few minutes later.
I would advise GoFundMe to go suck the barbed cock of Satan, but I have a sneaking suspicion they'd actually like that.
I heard some canadian broadcast where they mentioned some of the funds for the truckers were coming from sources in the US... I can't remember the actual wording, but it was said in such a way as to imply that it was evil outside forces, sort of like "Russian interference in elections". Good God, they have nothing new in their playbooks.
Me too.
I donated 3x original amount and used a satirical donor display name.
James Watson?
good educated guess. Though I see that one being very large donation, I made an average size donation.
We should all donate another $5 in the names of Justin Trudeau and James Watson, just for funsies.
yeah.
I did the search requests you suggested. Not a tiny thing at all, a million minds can matter when added up. These trends are closely monitored.
We are the drivers of the data they're slave to
Love the idea to use Google and Safari for this sort of thing.
We did the same - 10X original amount - no one is going to tell us who we can and can not support. I am especially going to enjoy Monday this week when I call the political party we usually donate to and let them know that this year 100% of our donations went to truckers instead!!
Thanks for all the excellent info! I was holding off on donating once I started hearing about GFM’s (or GFY) initial shenanigans last week… appreciate the new link and knowing that GSG exists!
https://www.gofundme.com/f/fundraise-to-bury-gofundme
Those were my thoughts too. Doubling my original donation.
note: it is in USD now.
I gave $25 through GFM. Did all the same things. FINALLY got through all the bot and DDOS attacks and gave $300 to the truckers and $30 to GiveSendGo since they don’t swipe off the top. The truckers are going to need an army of lawyers. I hope people keep donating. It’s turning into what we knew it would.
Yes. The ottawa police are now seizing food and propane. So ashamed of canada.
Ashamed of our government and the citizens willing to still vote for them going forward. The Truckers are not a fringe minority but represent a significant portion of our populace - and it will be much more so as more people wake up to discover just how badly they have been lied to!
It’s not going to end without sacrifice. The question now that the executable has come is will Canadians hide or stand with the truckers? I haven’t a clue…..
Yeah, I wish somehow we could have gotten the word out to all the donors and have them issue chargebacks and request refunds like you did. I am guessing they would have been inundated. Not good to have thousands of chargebacks filed against you.
Maybe GFM's actions will wake up more people. I certainly hope so!
Thank you for spreading the word about GiveSendGo!
My pleasure! Hopefully, a few people on here will read about asking the cc companies for chargebacks and will follow through on that same line of recourse. As a business owner, I know what a pain in the tail it is to have a chargeback filed against you. They require time and manpower, no matter whether you are proving your innocence or fixing your mistake.
Yes, lots of time and followup re chargebacks. :)
GiveSendGo is hard to access right now. Looks to me like Leftists are DDoS-ing it.
Overwhelmed by all the people flocking to them
Or they are just overloaded with people trying to access the donation?
Both. They tweeted earlier that they are under ddos attack
Seems to be a DOS attack on GiveSendGo. I keep getting 502 error
I think it's getting hammered with traffic. Try later.
Don't know if GiveSendGo has cloudflare as DDOS service. Cloudflare itself has become somewhat woke in it's protection.
I just typed in givesendgo.com (to go directly to the home page) and that's giving a 502 error, as well. So hopefully, it's just a tech or traffic issue and not more fuckery.
Its fuckery. Ddos attack. Plus swamped with donors. So good & bad.
A 502 error implies that the load balancing servers at GSG aren't able to handle the traffic. Often happens when a site gets much greater than design loads. I'm sure they are busily trying to fix it. Meanwhile wait a day and try again.
I get a notification that Cloudflare is working but GSG server is not. Dunno if that's so.
Me too
Thank you for the new donation link! Also, great idea on google search. Will follow your lead.
Also, i did not receive an email from gofundme re auto refund but i did complete the form prior to their announcement. I hope i get my money back.
You don't need to wait around, hoping. The real reason they changed their tune is a lot of donors immediately disputed the charge with their banks. Every chargeback costs gfm $15.
Costs them 10%
I got the email just recently but it showed up in my promotions (where my substacks do!)
I switched to Proton Mail just because of that. I used gmail for over a decade, but I’m not going to allow them to screen my Mail that they disapprove of.
So do I. There will come a day when they use their massive information gathering not for marketing, but to help the deep state identify us deplorables. They are probably doing it now.
That link hasn’t been working for me since last night! Keeps saying bad request. Tips?
They're under ddos attack plus inundated with donors.
Keep trying, is all I can say. You will be able to get on eventually, and the truckers (and all freedom lovers) will be so grateful for your persistence.
Same for me. I also tried to donate through another fundraiser Jeff Childers's Coffee & Covid sent around this morning, https://www.givesendgo.com/Warroomcanadanet, but I'm getting an error message when trying to donate through that one too. Will keep trying.
I ended up being successful but it took many tries :)
Okay. Good to know. Thanks for the update.
Not sure why this is happening but when I clicked on the link above a got a 502 Error message. Then I tried www.givesendgo.com and got the same message. I hop this is because the site is really, really busy rather than being messed with by the dark side of the force.
It is. They had a statement on their twitter last night asking for people to keep trying to get through - they are having difficulty keeping up with the deluge of donations coming in. We tried 3 times before getting through - and over that time the funds went up by over $100,000!
They are under ddos attack & inundated with donors
The GiveSendGo website seems to be having a hard time, I'm assuming because of increased traffic. :-)
Yes, plus under ddos attack!
Starve the Beast on all fronts. I de-Googled my life completely about a year ago and now pay for encrypted email (ProtonMail or TutaMail is a great choice). Use Brave and Brave search engine for browser and search. Do not use Amazon, FB, Instagram, Twitter, nothing. Contribute to great Gatos on Substack and buy as much food as possible locally from the farmers. This is the way forward.
Same. I'm also using cash if I can.
And look into getting gold and silver
Same, but I am happy to push unwanted search traffic numbers up on their site.
...and decentralize as much as possible.
Halallujia.
I also used to use Vivaldi, but since it used the chrome engines, it felt too googley for me. I switched to Brave and it turns out I was right to do so.
Stunningly outrageous! Never forgive, never forget. Gofundme is toast.
well, it certainly is toast for a minimum of 20-30% of Canadians now, possibly 50%.
This is not the first time goFme has done this to a cause I supported, so I knew it was a mistake when they first set up with goFme. I was hoping for the best but expecting the worst, as it were.
I don't know if anyone has discussed this , but last night there was a strategy being sent all over social media for donors to request a refund NOT through the goFme site, but rather by filing a dispute with the bank . cc company so that along with the refund, goFme would be forced to pay a ~$15 processing fee. Times tha by 120,000 donors and that is substantial.
Greater minds than mine on here would be able to tell me the likelihood of success of this strategy, but I have to believe that given goFme's change of heart to issue refunds automatically that it must have at least had some chance of working.
From what I read they can be charged 10%, or a min of $15, whichevers greater
Or 80%. The appearance that the Left is half the population is an illusion perpetrated by the Left.
For sure!!
The truckers seem to have relocated to gab, which is the right choice. The platform is funded by users and it has already shown, with actions and words of the founder Andrew Torba, that it can be trusted. In January apparently they got 85 million page views against 70 million 2 months ago so it's growing - unlike the nastiest competitor, Facebook, that finally lost users. Although not as good, Rumble and Gettr are also increasing. The Youtube policy about Covid (see the latest article from the Brownstone institute for an anaylsis) is self-harm on the altar of bootlicking to the Government. I hope that one of the core issues of 2022 will be the rise of alternative small tech platforms and that there will be more crashes for big tech - Google you are next. Only a matter of time.
They also started https://givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022, but the site is currently buckling under demand. Which is good 🙂. Gab is awesome, as is El Gato. He's my fav substack by far.
Wow over $3.6 million in USD.
Thanks for info on Gab!!
Gettr is like a direct copy of Twitter. Very easy to use.
From what I've heard about their willingness to censor, perhaps they are a more direct copy of Twitter than one might want. Maybe they're okay, and I'm on both, but I prefer Gab.
It was easy for Nick Fuentes, too. Up to a point.
I went to gettr as Malone mentioned it so I decided there vs gab. It’s ok but small
Time to play GoDefundMe - no more donations there EVER
Nice. :)
Makes you wonder how long they have been skimming $ off of "good causes".....I was just going to donate to a friend who rescues horses. Maybe I will just send her a check in the mail instead.
Beautiful idea!
Definitely. The one mistake made by the Trucker Convoy was using gofu**me. I broke ties with that organization years ago. I can't wait to see them on the list of businesses that failed and went bankrupt due to the "pandemic".
I thought so too, but now I see how it was the best inadvertent decision ever. The cause will get even more funding AND help shine more light on another delusional piece of the crumbling bedrock of shame. Let freedom ring (or HONK)!!
I’m with you. I don’t donate thru gofme so I hadn’t donated. Now I can!!
Donate here: https://www.givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022/donate
Here is the new donation link to support the truckers: https://givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022
Getting an Error 502
Getting in is kind of hit or miss right now, and the site is very slow. I am guessing they are getting a lot more traffic than usual.
and that's a good thing to hear!
Site is really slow, and someone said they might be experiencing a denial-of-service attack, but I was able to donate just now. It took a LOT of time between screens.
For me, too, and that was about an hour ago. I had to disable my VPN, and then it went through. Visa immediately texted me about a "possible fraudulent charge", which they did not do when I donated via GFM. Interesting...
Denial-of-Service attack is very very very plausible.
I thought that same thing. People do seem to still be getting on the site for now. This is probably the best thing to ever happen to GiveSendGo. They should send a thank you card to GFM for being such weasels.
B.J. Dichter and GivesendGo acknowledge there was DOS but they represent that it is going moderately well despite that.
They may have to do this over the phone.
I'v been trying to give since last night. Finally got almost all the way through but it got stuck on confirming it an hour ago. I'm sure this is a level of traffic they have never experienced and weren't prepared for. I just hope it's not sabotage.
I had to stand behind for about 2 hours before capacity was reduced. You might have to wait until 1AM Sunday morning.
I donated there about 30 minutes ago but I get an error when I try to revisit the page now. Hopefully it is just temporary.
You defund these platforms by not using them. Don’t watch woke sports events or buy the products advertised on their events. Suckaturd lost billions because people stopped using his Fakebook platform. Vote your conscience with your wallet.
Exactly! Over the years I have had so many friends that complain about products, websites, etc and the first question I ask is, "why are you still buying from/using them then?" People have been duped into thinking that doing something so easy and simple can't make a difference. Nothing could be further from the truth.
#boycott
This leads to a question. How much more damage could we do to FB if another couple of million users jump off on say... March 14?
We're gonna need another internet.
We have an internet but few understand that the site you visit must pay for the pipe that allows you access. For a popular site that gets a lot of traffic, that pipe must become large along with service costs to match. https://givesendgo.com/ likely was sized for typical traffic but has discovered too many people are arriving now. I do hope they prosper because thy have been the only reliable way to help the J6 political prisoners.
GET. OFF. AMAZON. TOO.
How many posting here still have Amazon accounts and shovel cash into Bezos' pockets? Get off, cancel you Amazon Chase CC (they tried pushing Gen Flynn off) and buy from smaller, preferably local sellers. Who cares if you pay a few bucks extra. Economic power is something we can all wield.
AND, if ethics aren't reason enough of a reason but your wallet is, I just read that they will be upping their Prime membership fee again.
FWIW: to avoid giving Amazon my money, I now use them as simply a search engine and a wish list. I have found, once you have decided on a product, that if you ‘brave’ the manufacturer, you can many times buy direct from the source. Most times I have found that the price is lower and they charge for shipping but together it adds up to the same price as on Amazon.
We have a few boxes, as little people, to stand firmly on and assert our humanity:
1. The #BallotBox, effective mainly at the local level, and especially so, because many decisions at that level are made with only a handful of votes.
2. The #CashBox, gold, silver, cryptocurrency for peer-to-peer exchange, and its converse the #boycott to deny our support to institutions and corporations inimical to human freedom,
3. The #JuryBox where nullification of unjust laws & regulations can be effected by jurors; by holding elected officials accountable through their bonds; or, by legally challenging the state of emergency. A powerful check on Leviathan's growth has been the assertion of #StatesRights in areas specifically not enumerated to the federal government in the US Constitution, e.g. gun laws. I've been boycotting air travel from the US in the hope that someday the egregious groping and grasping will be halted through a legal challenge.
4. The #PulpitBox, the voice of freedom, to expouse and discuss and challenge the woke narrative. This includes reinforcing families & building community through rezoning for multiple use structures, creating microschools, supporting homeschooling, etc.
5. The #LunchBox, because nutrition with healthy, natural foods devoid of sugar and seed oils is the key to metabolic health, which in turn allows healthspan to match lifespan. Metabolic health also allows #deprescription and freedom from the #PillBox mentality to cure ills.
6. And there's our last line of defense, the #AmmoBox. Could Australia have covid camps without previously forcibly disarming its denizens (denied citizens)? Do you think that 11.4 million deer hunters in the US are not a deterrent to a similar scheme here?
#ResistanceIsNotFutile!
Wow just wow. I'm not surprised they won't release the funds, but to try and direct them elsewhere is unconscionable. I hope after everyone gets their money returned, they voice loud and clear to NEVER use Gofundme again.
GoFundMe is owned by PayPal who also is big on closing people’s accounts and keeping the money. In early days of my nonprofit I was set up on GoFundMe but they never could figure out (insert the eye roll emoji here) how to send the funds to my bank so I’d get a check months later. When they were bought by PayPal, with whom I’d had not good experiences, I left and have never done anything on that platform again. The truckers have a campaign on a new platform set up now so hopefully people will know and get their money back (one day….) from GoFundMe. They’re scam artists of the highest order.
Yep, I stopped using PayPal some months ago. Not that I did much with them, but they're #DeadToMe now. (And their reports are so ass-backwards and user-unfriendly to the nth degree.)
Agreed! I do have it as an option for my nonprofit donors on my 2 donation platforms and maybe 2-3 who use it. (It annoys the crap out of me that I have to "request" the money every time. Hello - send the damn money!) But for people living overseas it can be the only way some can donate. But I *never* use it personally.
If a client *asks* whether I accept PayPal, I will say yes. But my invoices tell them that I take CCs, checks, Apple Pay, Cash App (though I think they're no good, because of their affiliation with I can't remember whom, so I may scotch this one), Zelle, and Venmo.
Corporate America keeps effing us in so many ways, that I'm sure some of those I listed that I DO accept are just as bad as PayPal and Cash App.
It's hard because you definitely want to make it as easy as possible for customers/donors to pay. Venmo is actually owned by paypal as well though. We do use it, just because it's how everyone sends money. But mostly just to/from our kids, a pet sitter, and one other service.
Eff.
Thankfully, Venmo is rarely (if ever...can't recall any client using Venmo) used. So I'll scrap that one as well. In my family, the predominant means are Zelle and Apple Pay. And with clients is either CC or check.
Ah...that explains why Elon Musk had an opinion.
Still can't comprehend how they could use GoFuckMe in the first place: how could one b so NAIVE!!? Just like the US Truckers getting their Fakebook group deleted!
Apart from getting screwed by LeftTech, u already should stop using them to stop feeding the monster: ALWAYS use NewTech! Boycott BigTech/BigMedia/BigCorporate that r kidnapped by (or pandering to) the left!
Same here, and I didn't donate for that reason. GFM was always going to bend them over. In the end it's probably good they did, it caused more outrage and woke a few more people up to what's really happening.
Bastards. It's still unethical, arbitrary and capricious. Cancel GoFundMe!
I feel the more appropriate response is "stop using GoFundMe" -- cancelling is wet work of the keyboard tyrants. Let's not be them.
Like so many other left extremists (the two tend to be interchangeable now), this action by GoFundMe is, at least to me, plain illegal. I would like to see the Freedom Convoy donors money not only returned, but the GFM platform shut down and its bosses behind bars.
Jim Watson, Mayor of Ottawa, is behind this mis-appropriation of funds, he had even called for money to be seized and given to Ottawa to pay for costs. Watson also orchestrated with tax payers money the booking of most hotel rooms in Ottawa to prevent visitors with instructions not to re-rent empty rooms. One of the top donors of the new funding campaign chose as display name none else but Jim Watson, for $2000.
Wonder how the local taxpayers feel about his actions? I understand that in early days only 30% of those polled supported the truckers. Have no idea now, but suspect support has increased as people become aware of the government continued overreach. For some reason liberals always overreach imagining their policies successful.
Mr Watson must feel very politically comfortable in his city. No voter threat?
GoFuckYourself, GoFundMe. 😡
That's what I said on their Twitter, only I abbreviated it GFY. Then I attached the picture from this Substack, and, I provided the link to this Substack.
GiveSendGo shows $750,000 already. not too bad. hope some of that gets to the truckers. if I was local, I'd just go give my $30 to an actual trucker -- cash.
Lots of people gave cash directly to truckers last week. My wife saw it first hand at one of the North Toronto rallying stations
How far we have come in a week!
A network of local truckers we can deliver donations of all sorts to would be helpful.
Elon Musk chipped in against GoFundMe as well.
Now this is interesting. Sometime back, on one of his podcasts, Brett Weinstein said his solution to the vaccine was to have Musk buy out the vaccine-makers to stop with the junk. If money is what they want, Musk would have the means to get it to them.
I didn't think this was the best idea, because rarely do people in power only want money. They want glory, they want a legacy, they want a treasured place in the history books. I can imagine Albert Bourla (Pfizer CEO) telling his great-grandchildren he had led Pfizer when it created the mRNA cure for cancer.
A better idea, I think, would be to have Musk build his own social media platforms, browsers, servers and all, using content-neutral administration. Might be part of legacy he could be proud of.
Conquest's Second Law of Politics: Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.
So Musk building Muskbook and Twitmusk and MuskBrowser and MuskSearch is a good idea, but it would only work for a while; probably only as long as Musk himself is paying attention to it.
They should be called GoFuckMe with a middle finger icon instead of the 3 rays of whatever that is supposed to be.
We can call them 'Gofuckyourselves' from now on...
You keep making it, I'll keep following you there.
Unfortunately at this moment every alternative (apparently not Substack--yet) comes with its own to me unwanted ideology. I joined GETTR only because the wannabe killer shrike banned Robert Malone, but I certainly don't like the people behind it. I'm glad there's an apparently thriving alternative to GFM, but its explicitly Christian ethos displeases me. Over and over, I find there's no genuinely free-thought-filled space for me to rest my more--irritated-every-moment head.
Agree with you but have never commented on the "Christian" slant many of the sites use...I too can overlook it but it does not please me either. Hard to find any site that is "free?" of having to say.....except this and this etc etc. Everyone here pretty sure of the GiveSendGo site for the truckers? I sent to the GFM site but even when I did so I was skeptical they would allow the donations to continue....and now not surprised they halted them. It will be tough to go against the establishment herd mentality...government.... sociopaths and psychopaths with money, therefore power.
And I finally joined that bloody shrike only because there are those--like Alexandros Marinos--who say things I really want to hear, and in honesty, getting cranky because a site stopped letting me read it without joining is a childish tantrum. It is their property after all. We teh people have no free virtual public square and that is the greatest danger.
I've not read of GiveSendGo refusing their services to anyone based on religion. Is there any of that? What about politics? I hope not.
Vaccine injury victims. Early treatment doctors. Del Bigtree and Journalists like him. So there is definitely a political agenda.
To clarify those deletions were for GoFundMe. GiveSendGo is smaller, maybe newer. Should find out more about ownership, public or private status, past history.
Gotchya, thanks.
Not clear what you mean. Are they blocking support to those people? I know so little about them.
I didn't say that.
Oh. Well, damn Christians...
I would be more comfortable if GiveSendGo were broadly multi-denominational of all religions. Otherwise MSM paints any funded campaign as fundamental or radical Christian, etc.
The other side of the coin of "evolving systems we can trust" is to abandon those we can no longer trust. For years I have been hoping that a nationalist / America First patriot-patron with leadership chops would organize a nationwide boycott of leftwing corporations, non-profits, and other sundry organizations. Someone with a megaphone, some sharp IT professionals, and a staff of researchers could set up a website ("Fight Fire With Fire"?) and relentlessly publicize and call attention to leftwing operations that deserve to be starved. I could see website features like 1) email and phone contact information for the corporate C-suite officers 2) "Hit Them Where They Advertise" 3) "Target of The Week" and 4) Right-Thinking Alternative Businesses.
We need a sort of rightwing Southern Poverty Law Center / Sleeping Giants to catalog left wingers that need to be boycotted and otherwise shunned. The right has been shy about punishing left-leaning businesses because Muh Capitalism, but sites like GoFu**Me have long proven that they are hopelessly partisan. Why is any non-leftist still using them? Stop complaining about the malfeasance of the left. We outnumber them, but we lack the weapons and the leadership for what is turning into an existential struggle on this critical battlefield. And when the cause is important enough (ending vaccine and mask mandates--especially for children!), Fight Fire With Fire could also easily be extended into organizing nationwide general strikes. We have the power. We just don't have the power switch.
We have a few boxes, as little people, to stand firmly on and assert our humanity:
1. The #BallotBox, effective mainly at the local level, and especially so, because many decisions at that level are made with only a handful of votes.
2. The #CashBox, gold, silver, cryptocurrency for peer-to-peer exchange, and its converse the #boycott to deny our support to institutions and corporations inimical to human freedom,
3. The #JuryBox where nullification of unjust laws & regulations can be effected by jurors; by holding elected officials accountable through their bonds; or, by legally challenging the state of emergency. A powerful check on Leviathan's growth has been the assertion of #StatesRights in areas specifically not enumerated to the federal government in the US Constitution, e.g. gun laws. I've been boycotting air travel from the US in the hope that someday the egregious groping and grasping will be halted through a legal challenge.
4. The #PulpitBox, the voice of freedom, to expouse and discuss and challenge the woke narrative. This includes reinforcing families & building community through rezoning for multiple use structures, creating microschools, supporting homeschooling, etc.
5. The #LunchBox, because nutrition with healthy, natural foods devoid of sugar and seed oils is the key to metabolic health, which in turn allows healthspan to match lifespan. Metabolic health also allows #deprescription and freedom from the #PillBox mentality to cure ills.
6. And there's our last line of defense, the #AmmoBox. Could Australia have covid camps without previously forcibly disarming its denizens (denied citizens)? Do you think that 11.4 million deer hunters in the US are not a deterrent to a similar scheme here?
#ResistanceIsNotFutile!
And just FTR, there are millions of additional 2A supporters in America who *aren't* hunters. There are MANY of us...I mean...of them, many of them, out there.
In that vein, you can use the site https://www.2ndvote.com/ to help sort through companies and decide which you feel you want to support with your consumer dollars.
I know about 2ndvote. I just think their criteria is obviously way out of whack. They are definitely not America First! If you look at their Good/Bad Actors you will find Catholic Charities listed under "Good." I am Catholic but I cannot imagine a more pernicious, anti-American organization. They are one of the USG's largest social services subcontractors that is happy to feed, protect, and transport illegal aliens around the country. Were I the governor of a state, I would charge them with felony accessory to human trafficking and not allow them to operate within my state.
The "the Constitution is not a suicide pact" truism can be altered and be just as true: Capitalism is not a suicide pact.
F the entities and institutions who would - and ARE - using the Constitution or the free market to destroy the Constitution, the free market, and freedom and liberty itself.
F 'em, and put 'em under.
My 1-star review of GFM said that not only is this theft, anyone who considers using GFM in the future should remember that they can't be trusted.
Why isn’t this wire fraud?
It’s correct to call out the proposed reallocation as outrageous but it is just as outrageous for them to withhold funds from the truckers on a sham rationale.
GoFundMe is acting tyrannically to prop up fake news reports and questionable police reports, that paint all the truckers and their movement with the brush of an unrepresentative few, as an excuse to interfere with donations.
The "it's a private company they can do what they want" argument is overused and not necessarily true especially if there are user agreements or if there is misrepresentation. Has someone checked whether the EUA agreement says ‘we can choose to withhold any and all funds at any time for any reason, and choose not to give the money raised to the campaign owner ever’.
Can UPS decide not to deliver a package once it has been accepted and paid for political reasons , or even for a reason that the person is alleged to have been involved in a crime or even convicted?
Can a bank choose not to clear a validly made check by the payor to the payee for political reasons, or even for a reason that the person is alleged to have been involved in a crime or even convicted?
Agreed, I think "respecting private companies rights" is way overrated. It is the exact argument that many red state legislatures used to sit on their hands and not pass legislation against the vaccine mandates. Using this 11th Commandment of many "conservatives" makes someone like Kristi Noem a hero and Ron Desantis a villain.
The left is only using it now because it's convenient, they don't actually believe it. If they did, they wouldn't be trying to shut down Substack for the sin of hosting people who have been kicked off Twitter.
I liked the first version of the comment as well (The Jungle). This extreme belief in the principle clouds consideration of other important factors, witness the whole issue about social media companies as public forums vs. private publishers (editorial control), and the section 230 protections from liability.
The comment about "five sad plants" in CHAZ/CHOP has me laughing out loud. I walked through CHAZ during it's 2-week heyday, out of curiosity, and can assure you it couldn't have been more than 5 sad plants. 😆😭😆
Just read they've backtracked and will auto-issue refunds. They must have had a total sh*t storm of complaints.
And if in Britain, also stop paying the BBC licence fee. Defund the "Trusted News" initiative, and all who sail in her.
I cancelled my BBC TV Licence Direct Debit over 3 years ago. Never looked back. Never had a visit (and if you do, just shut the door, no need to say anything). I use the threatening letters as firelighters.
Any competent prosecutor would investigate Go Fund Me first thing Monday morning.
I'm old enough to remember when GoFundMe was bailing out rioters.
https://twitter.com/gofundme/status/1267825522056159234
Andy Ngo recalls when GoFundMe supported squatters, domestic terrorist groups, and someone who assaulted him in 2019:
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1489838364916338688
Jack Posobiac recalls when GoFundMe supported CHAZ/CHOP after people were murdered there. https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1489787114661294087
The entire system is corrupt..This type of "charity" would be a "charity of their choice"
University Of Toronto “Institute For Pandemics” (Charity) Funded By Millers, Merck, Run By Ontario Science Table
https://lionessofjudah.substack.com/p/university-of-toronto-institute-for
Trudope doesn’t get it, the more he pushes, the harder the resistance and it is all downhill for him from here on.... He has met more than his match in the FreedomConvoy which has raised over a million dollars in 12 hours. Now the government is stopping all the hotels from honouring the bookings, by sequestering the rooms with taxpayer dollars. This will not be a happy ending for him.
I want GoFundMe destroyed.
This is spot on -- I've never been on FB or IG, etc.
Something odd about Substack, however, is every time I add a new writer to my subscription, the next thing that pops up is something about tweeting this. Why is that? It seems to go against the whole concept of Substack to me -- "subscribe to us and tell the world on the one-party fascist Twitter site."
A special note regarding Twitter: I used to be able to read a tweet thread if linked to an article but the last month or so within 20 seconds of going to that tweet thread, a pop-up blocks my view. This pop-up wants me to join or sign into Twitter to read that thread. I have no plans to join that site or to let them know who I am in my Brave VPN-cloaked world. So Substack writers who link to Twitter threads should be aware that perhaps many other Substack readers are like me and avoid these big-tech sites.
I too would much prefer non-twitter links, such as a link to a threadreaderapp unroll for twitter threads.
From Dr. Paul Alexander’s substack, the GiveSendGo for Canadian truckers: https://www.givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022. Spread the word!!!
I think they’re still having high traffic issues, but don’t give up. Try again later.
I was lucky enough to donate via GSG first thing this morning in the UK, before the website crashed under the weight of donations ( https://www.givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022 )
And yes, I more than doubled my initial donation. FU GFM . Get Woke, Go Broke.
I think doubling or tripling is what came to mind for many people. Will keep trying to get in.
And … may evil war with evil - and destroy itself.
We're trying but it's still crashed
Honestly, who is the doofus who even started this GoFundMe? Have they been under a rock? GoFundMe has already screwed over so many conservative fundraisers, it’s appalling. Go use GiveSendGo who makes the fee optional and not mandatory. GoFundMe deserves to burn in hell attempting to steal people’s money.
GoFundMe debacle further disclosure. Needed to be exposed. Will generate more attention and commitment to get past the global tyrannical takeover. Think everyday about what we spend our money on, to what vendor, and on what platform we spend the money. If everyone was mindful and made adjustments the mass of minor individual alterations in financial decisions would make enormous change. For the now, some purchases can just be delayed to make a statement.
Yep, I've been considering my own choices in these matters, and making adjustments where I choose to spend. Alongside those choices, I'm also considering the privacy issues surveillance capitalism thrives on. Lots of things to think about; lots of habits and behaviors to change.
I am listening to an interview of RFK Jr. by Foster Gamble who is asking him the personal questions--how do you cope, what do you think you can do that matters. He says to start your own personal reset each morning anew, focus on how to be a better person daily, and to spend your efforts on the things under your control and for which you might have reasonable influence. Consider staying constructive and compassionate in comments and reactions. Remember the astonishing range of people participating in the same freedom movement--plenty of who have been historically center or left, rejecting whatever this newer left has become.
I keep ❤️ Your comments everywhere. I’m hoping for positive change, too.
I need to practice that advice. I'll look for that interview.
Easy to be hard. (3 Dog Night?)
It’s baby steps, I know, but I closed my Twitter account several years ago, canceled Amazon Prime a few years ago and now don’t buy from them ever, at all, quit using Facebook last year, switched to Brave a few years ago, and just recently got ProtonMail.
I know there are still woke companies I use (dammit Visa) but I’m trying.
Why do groups keep having to learn this lesson? Every single time a group or person with a hint of the wrong type of views starts one it gets screwed with. How about people use common sense and remember what happened last time?
just found a great way to spam gofundme:
https://support.gofundme.com/hc/en-us/articles/4417771259163-Freedom-Convoy-2022-Refund-Request-
click on link "complete this form" and spam them with fukking.thieves@gofundme.suckdis, or whatever your imagination comes up with. we get the bonus of getting their system churning out errors that will be checked by human resources. win-win!! :D
There's also this: https://twitter.com/GiveSendGo/status/1489808343459848196
GiveSendGo
@GiveSendGo
Just in case you missed it-Did you know if you dispute the donation to gfm with your bank/CC they will be charged a $15 dispute fee. They want you to click the refund link because then there will be no fees. What they don't want is 120,000 (amt of donors) $15 fees! Just sayin'
that was fun thanks
"Ever hear of BTC or ETH?" Gold, that!
Ding ding! I've been telling people for years that the permissionless aspect of crypto was a major selling point. "But I have Paypal already.................."
We should back any parallel institutions that take on the rotten ones.
All of leftism can be encapsulated in one sentence:
"Hand over your stuff and do what I tell you or my thugs will throw you in a cage and kill you if you resist."
They believe they own you, everything you possess and even your children. They have murdered some 150 million souls in the last century or so and oppressed, impoverished and displaced countless millions more. They have destroyed every society and economy they've seized control of, without exception.
Leftism as a political force must be humiliated and defeated if we are to regain our civilization.
"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!"
~ Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy
The super notorious thing (IMO) is that the protest was perfectly legal when it started, but because tyrants gonna tyrant, NOW it's 'illegal'.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/nova-scotia-responds-to-trucker-convoy
How are we supposed to use our right to protest when the 'leaders' will simply declare any such protest illegal and cut off all support? And more importantly -- are the 'leaders' doing this on purpose to escalate the situation?
The problem with respecting the right of private companies to make choices we might not agree with is that the entire system that "legitimizes" private companies to participate in the "economy" are entirely the purview of one particular belief system. So bake my cake you bigot.
I am beyond livid! Next stop for convoy, GoFundMe corporate office.
So glad they moved to givesendgo. A bunch of people suggested that a while back when gofuckme 1st started giving the truckers a hard time.
Get the refund and give it via givesendgo
https://www.givesendgo.com/FreedomConvoy2022
They just accidentally mistyped when naming their site, they meant to call it "GoF*ckMe", and if you use their services, you agree to that.
Btw, this blog tends to have the best photos :D