The reason given was "Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for certain sexually oriented materials or services or for items that could be considered obscene". This is wrong/false on so many levels. We used PayPal only as a means to receive voluntary donations from people who wanted to support further development of Voat and to help pay for our hosting fees. This is beyond crazy.
According to PayPal User Agreement, our funds can be kept by PayPal for 180 days. I requested further clarification from PayPal, but I would like to advise everyone who planned to donate to Voat - to NOT do so via PayPal.
Honestly, I don't know what I expected when I trusted PayPal with our donation money. I apologize to everyone who donated to us through PayPal and I will badge everyone who did so even if the funds are never released by PayPal.
view the rest of the comments →
milliamp ago
I honestly think you should just enable some ads on the website now. People who don't want to see them can use Ad Block Plus or ublock and it will bring in enough money for operating expenses.
If you set out running voat.co on donated time if it gets big you'll have to quit and do something else. If you monetize it right away if it gets big you can hire people to help you run the place. It wasn't the ads on reddit I had the problem with, it was the moderation.
Create an open platform for people to communicate and people will continue to trickle in as as SJW's on reddit continue to ratchet down on what things are approved to talk about.
Monetize voat.co, leave discussion open, and let reddit essentially become Tumblr. Part of free speech is taking the bad with the good. I don't have to agree with everyones opinion on anything but I have a brain and a downvote button to deal with the opinions I don't like. Just don't get in the habit of deleting the opinions you disagree with and this should turn out to be a large website that will hopefully be lucrative for you in the long run.
Monetizing it now will allow you to scale.