Would PrivacyGuides consider setting up Liberapay as an additional way to donate? From the vetting I’ve done, it appears to be a solid privacy respecting platform that supports open source and libre oriented communities.
It would be nice to have another option and since I’m already using the platform to support other projects I could easily setup a recurring donation for PrivacyGuides.
Setting up new accounts for us privacy conscious folks is especially difficult, moreover when we need to include a payment method. When I initially signed up at Liberapay.com I was able to use a prepaid card behind a VPN without disclosing personal information.
That’s not how it usually goes in my experience on most platforms when making financial transactions, typically I must unblock Google, then do about 10 reCAPTCHA’s, only to get a message that my transaction was declined because I’m using a VPN.
Just trying to make a helpful and kind suggestion, I hope it didn’t come across as a rant because that’s certainly not what my intention is.
OK, after more searching, let me answer my own question and include a new suggestion. Please update the Donate page to include PrivacyGuides's profile - Liberapay
We set that up some time ago (back in the Privacy Tools days). The reason it didn’t get a whole lot of use is because some members abstained from making a withdrawal.
As a result the rest of the members followed. We use the OpenCollective org primarily because it means donations can directly go into the organization and all expenses are transparent.
I remember being a bit skeptical of the Liberapay setup initially myself. I know they’ve made some changes over the years, but I’m not sure if the withdrawal setup is different now. Thanks for responding to the inquiry!
One of the other things I don’t really like about Liberapay, is it forces non-US people to use PayPal as that is the only payment processor. US/EU citizens have the option of Stripe. None of these are really privacy friendly though.
We could also consider publishing a Monero address for those not wanting to use OpenCollective. That could then be evenly split periodically among team members. We’re not a huge organization, so it wouldn’t be too much effort.
Thanks Daniel. I’ve looked into buying crypto to support open source projects and it’s probably one of the best ways for a privacy conscious person to go about donating. Unfortunately, sites like Coinbase that require me to submit a copy of my drivers license and SS# to buy $20 worth of crypto currency aren’t plausible for me. I’m sure their are better options. The perception that everyone buying crypto is a criminal propagated by the government in the US is scary IMHO.
The exchanges that require KYC are the ones which will turn fiat currency into crypto. I think to be honest they’re really no different from a bank in that regard, with the notable exception that there isn’t a guarantee on deposits from your government.
Once converted to crypto though it can be moved about, or even off a platform entirely to something like monero.