That was quick
Posted on November 26th, 2015 – 2 CommentsEarly this morning I received an email notifying me that our GoFundMe campaign has been removed due to a violation of the “Not Allowed on GoFundMe” section of their Terms & Conditions.
Although no such section exists I assume that they were referring to this part:
…you agree to not use the Services to:
establish or contribute to any Campaign with the implicit or express purpose relating to any of the following: …
6. gambling, gaming and/or any other activity with an entry fee and a prize, including, but not limited to casino games, sports betting, fantasy sports, horse or greyhound racing, lottery tickets, other ventures that facilitate gambling, games of skill or chance (whether or not it is legally defined as a lottery) or sweepstakes;
This had given us pause when we were signing up for GoFundMe but we didn’t think that asking for support to help us while I write free and open-source game software would be a problem.
Besides, whether it’s facilitating gambling or funding gambling trips, actually asking for money to gamble with, funding poker games, funding poker buy-ins, funding a casino, and funding online gambling software, there are numerous examples on GoFundMe where the “strictly enforced policies” that their email mentions don’t seem to apply. Moreover there’s the fact that a number of these campaigns have been categorized meaning that they’ve actually been reviewed by GoFundMe.
Either GoFundMe’s policies are very selective or they’re sloppily applied. The fact that GoFundMe tends to shy away from controversial campaigns suggests that it’s probably the former.
Of course GoFundMe is free to censor their own services and roughly $50 of the $55 raised so far (thank you!) has been collected so I don’t feel cheated but it sure would be nice if they were consistent. It would’ve also been nice if they had simply halted the campaign instead of just deleting it outright; if we didn’t already have the donors’ contact information we would’ve lost it without warning.
Sarah and I are now looking at alternatives but in the meantime it seems kind of silly not to provide a Bitcoin address for donations:
1N5nkMSWf1vTkbekst4PvsGq3Q5eK38ga5
Thank you again for your continued support and for helping to spread the word!
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