Because GoFundMe revolves around taking your money they should feel the full wrath of the law for attempting to Nationalize “Freedom Convoy” donations – February 10, 2022,
When it comes to Big Tech overreach, I’m typically on the side of Big Tech, why? Because nobody forces you to use YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook, I can’t tell you the last time I logged onto Twitter or Facebook. Once it came to my attention that Facebook and Twitter were Partisan supporters of a particular political view I stopped using them. I do watch YouTube, but not like I did before, although Twitter and Facebook revolve around collecting advertising dollars and selling and collecting your personal data, their business model doesn’t revolve around taking your money for causes you believe in.
Facebook as an example is a social media website, it doesn’t present itself as a crowdfunding website. GoFundMe on the other is an American for-profit crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money for events ranging from life events such as celebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances like accidents and illnesses So to put this in its proper context, Imagine my goal was to end covid-19 and I sent money to an organization that wanted to end covid-19 using GoFundMe.
After I sent the entity money to end Covid-19, GoFundMe steals my money and says it will use it to give to BlackLivesMatter, because GoFundMe feels that my money is better served in helping Patrisse Cullors build her Real Estate empire? That’s a scam. What GoFundMe initially stated was the following:
“Given how this situation has evolved, no further funds will be directly distributed to the Freedom Convoy organizers — we will work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers and verified by GoFundMe,” GoFundMe said.
How is anyone supposed to interpret that? If GoFundMe decides that the Freedom Convoy is engaging in unlawful activities, why would GoFundMe even consider redirecting the money aimed at their cause? Anyway long story short, after pressure GoFundMe did what they were supposed to do in the first place which was to refund the money to the rightful owners.
But the damage has been done, and clearly, there was a political and financial motive behind their initial decision, because after all how often does GoFundMe raise $10 million dollars especially in such a short amount of time? GoFundMe clearly wanted to collect fees, I know from personal experience the fees associated with refunds, but GoFundMe made the business decision to take a partisan stance, if that’s what they want to do, it’s their decision, but they have to pay the fees.
There’s a saying “Go Woke, Go Broke” when you’re in business, it’s always best practice to avoid taking a political stance, because the moment you make the decision to be overtly political, it’s only a matter of time, you’ll get exposed thereby alienating an entire group of people. Now, this is all well and good, if you were political from the beginning, because your cost structure would reflect that, but if you present yourself as neutral and decide to become partisan, well, you might find that your bottom line gets hit hard, by your bad decision making.
All of a sudden because of one dumb decision, GoFundMe now has an added expense it could have easily avoided, by simply refunding people’s money. The U.S States of Florida, Texas, Missouri, West Virginia are now investigating GoFundMe, which is now an additional expense, they could have avoided had they simply avoided getting political. Had GoFundMe simply said, we don’t like this “Freedom Convoy” so we’re refunding your money, no harm, no foul.
But they made the decision to complicate and compromise their company by making a public statement, that could be viewed as them STEALING money and redistributing said money to entities it claims are credible and established, further complicating the matter, GoFundMe claims it will collude with the same entity it’s no longer supporting? The GoFundMe initial statement is open to all sorts of interpretation, and from my point of view appears to revolve around GoFundMe not wanting to pay back fees associated with refunding the money.
Interesting times ahead!