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.
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lawofchaos ago
I wonder how long it will take before an SRS mod boats about reporting Voat to PayPal as a porn service or something.
damnbiker ago
How does one report something like that to Paypal? I mean, Reddit is already pretty much dead. Why don't we just report all the NSFW subreddits to Paypal and watch their user based funding slow down even more?
Think about it: There's a lot of user generated NSFW content and no verification of the age of the submitter or the viewer. r/gonewild r/NSFW are two that I can think of, off the top of my head. Anyone else have a list?
KiTA ago
Just as a reminder:
Just sayin. Good for the goose, good for the gander.
RottenSausage ago
The actions PayPal took were from a "Brand Protection" perspective. The payment networks (visa, MC) don't act as moral arbiters - but their Brand Protection rules do act on illegal transactions entering the payment system. Therefore corpses and abortions do not fall under brand protection (they are moral issues), but illegal transaction do - such as illegal adult content (rape, child porn), drugs, gambling, counterfeit goods (fake Prada purses, pirated movies) and drugs for instance. So you identify that type of illegal content, report it to the card networks (they have mailboxes to report illegal activity) and then you are actually going somewhere.
Clbull ago
The reason why targeting PayPal is so harmful for Voat and not for Reddit is because the owner of Voat is less willing to compromise on censoring or removing controversial and legal-grey-area content, which has harmed Reddit's growth and perception in the media in the past.
Ironically, flagging up offensive subreddits to PayPal will give the admins the excuse to actually get off their asses and nuke them from orbit and may actually improve their image in the media and draw in more users. A lot of people questioned the choices of subreddits that the admins have removed in the past but nobody's going to question their removal.
RightInThePussy ago
I think it will just continue driving users away,
Regardless I just reported the fuckers to paypal