You can use bank transfers and Bitcoin to donate directly, see this page: <a href="https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/" rel="nofollow">https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/</a><p>It seems that bitcoin donations are pouring in (over $4 million already). You can watch the bitcoin address here: <a href="https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/bc1qkd5az2ml7dk5j5h672yhxmhmxe9tuf97j39fm6" rel="nofollow">https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/bc1qkd5az2ml7dk5j5...</a>
Patreon blocked large Ukrainian army charity volunteers account <a href="https://savelife.in.ua/en/" rel="nofollow">https://savelife.in.ua/en/</a>
It was probably the second largest on Patreon - getting more than a 200 000$ a month
"We don’t allow Patreon to be used for funding weapons or military activity."
What is this then?
<a href="https://www.patreon.com/search?q=guns" rel="nofollow">https://www.patreon.com/search?q=guns</a>
Direct link to Patreon's statement: <a href="https://blog.patreon.com/on-the-removal-of-come-back-alive" rel="nofollow">https://blog.patreon.com/on-the-removal-of-come-back-alive</a>
I know emotions are running high in this thread but asking to educate myself.<p>Ukraine is not a tiny nation, and Russia is huge. In that scenario how will a small assortment of weapons and software even help them? Do they even need weapons help? Also how can a charity buy that list and supply? Can an organization buy them, feels like that kind of a purchase should be restricted to countries only.
This title seems designed to cause outrage. In their post, it's very clear why they couldn't allow the account to remain active: "The website of the organization says they use contributions to finance and train military personnel."<p>Individuals should not be funding foreign militaries. It does not matter if the country was unjustly attacked or not.
If anyone wants to support Ukraine defense directly, please use:<p><a href="https://ukraine.ua/news/support-the-armed-forces-of-ukraine/" rel="nofollow">https://ukraine.ua/news/support-the-armed-forces-of-ukraine/</a> or <a href="https://ukraine.ua/news/donate-to-the-nbu-fund/" rel="nofollow">https://ukraine.ua/news/donate-to-the-nbu-fund/</a><p>this is a bit of a hassle, as UA government agencies can accept donations only through wire transfers, but that's just a few clicks in the banking app anyway.
You can also donate to entities like <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.unhcr.org/</a>. Could someone suggest other reputable options?<p>Tangentially (as far as I can tell this doesn’t apply to the Patreon in this post), seeing social media scam profiting from the tragedy by tricking people into reposting shady donation links is disheartening.
Seems sensible. Private companies shouldn't be funding wars, particularly wars overseas from where they are based. The Ukrainian's need help but this should be coming from government's, not private citizens through a private foreign company. I feel like this shouldn't be controversial at all.
So essentially the problem is they're sticking to their "violence is bad" policy when in this specific situation violence is maybe not bad.
Can someone with knowledge of these things clarify the ramifications for their business if they were to allow something like this on their platform? I'd imagine it would have significant regulatory and legal implications. Which of course sounds mild compared to the ramifications to the lives of those affected, but I'm wondering if it would be a business-killing move for some legal reason.<p>To me, the wildest thing here is not that they enforced their policy, but that a site that started as a means for YouTube musicians to get paid has now become a player in international politics and warfare.
Which is why I put through a request to have my Patreon account deleted today. Sorry to the channels that I supported, I'll try find a way to support you without using Patreon.
> We are shocked and heartbroken at the invasion of Ukraine. Like so many around the world, we are watching this tragedy closely and wishing for the safety of the Ukrainian people in harm’s way.<p>Their wishes aren't worth squat.
Here's a couple of other options (please verify yourself):<p><a href="https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/" rel="nofollow">https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/</a><p><a href="https://ukraine.ua/news/support-the-armed-forces-of-ukraine/" rel="nofollow">https://ukraine.ua/news/support-the-armed-forces-of-ukraine/</a>
Considering that they use funds only (mostly) to buy defence stuff and to support the recovery of the veterans (there will be many with PTSD and injuries after this war), Patreon is in a morally wrong territory here.<p>Like other posters said there are several other ways to support this fund (crypto / wire transfer) or Ukrainian army directly (wire transfer).<p>With crypto there is an almost 100% chance the money transfer will go through. Not sure about banks, haven't heard anything about wire transfers not going through
This was the right move to make- it's hard to verify whether the money is going to, for example, neo-fascist paramilitary groups, which are rampant in western Ukraine at the moment. I personally think that donating to groups providing aid and medical care to civilians and refugees -the red cross and so forth- is a much more effective way to help actual suffering people.<p>Adding more weapons to an ongoing conflict is an <i>extraordinarily</i> difficult thing to do in a helpful way, even with the best of intentions, as the history of western intervention in foreign conflicts has vividly demonstrated. You think that the CIA can't seem to do it, despite decades of attempts and the best intelligence apparatus in the world- but you can? They gave guns to the Taliban, to Saddam Hussein, and on and on- how did that turn out? Do you really know who you're giving guns to?
And after the conflict is over, the guns don't go away- they just change hands, and what will they be used for then? It's kind of dismaying to see how many people here have still not learned this lesson.<p>Patreon did the right thing. They are the adults in the room.
If you want to fund guns for Ukraine to fight back, you can donate directly to the Ministry of Defense here: <a href="https://ukraine.ua/news/support-the-armed-forces-of-ukraine/" rel="nofollow">https://ukraine.ua/news/support-the-armed-forces-of-ukraine/</a>
Related thread:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30465394" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30465394</a><p>In case you'd like to donate or share the financial help link:
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220224191725/https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20220224191725/https://savelife....</a>
(I'm using Wayback just in case Russian government hacks it, the original: <a href="https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/" rel="nofollow">https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/</a>)
Patreon takes a cut of 5-12%. This is okay for the content distribution platforms, but it is outrageous for the charities.<p>Donate directly to the Come Back Alive and the army <a href="https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-spetsrahunok-dlya-zboru-koshtiv-na-potrebi-armiyi" rel="nofollow">https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-sp...</a>. The last link lists the account numbers for many currencies.
The flow of money seems to be one major battleground in this war.<p>The biggest sanctions so far are disallowing to exchange funds with some russian banks. And the "nuclear option" is to disallow Russia from using the SWIFT system.<p>What are the chances that this conflict will completely change how trading is done between countries?<p>Could the USA, Europe, South Korea etc simply "nullify" all Russian holdings of their currency? I guess it is just some numbers on computers the respective countries have control over?
Personal donations to a foreign nation-state for the purposes of building and supporting military operations is not the cyberpunk plotline I expected to come out of 2022.
Actual link: <a href="https://blog.patreon.com/on-the-removal-of-come-back-alive" rel="nofollow">https://blog.patreon.com/on-the-removal-of-come-back-alive</a>
A funding mechanism should be set up for refugees fleeing Ukraine. Jen Psaki announced US is coordinating with Poland to accept refugees who want to relocate to US.
There's a big risk that everything you send to them will be stolen by Russia, and helps them to circumvent the sanctions.<p>The same goes for any weapons any country sends there.
The charity states they'll use the funds for military training ...<p>And the real question is: what would you do if you were Patreon management right now?
Twitter has just blocked <a href="https://twitter.com/OSINT_Ukraine" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/OSINT_Ukraine</a> account. Good job Twitter, congratulation, Mr. Putin certainly approves your support.
> If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
My wife and I have both deleted our Patreon accounts in protest. As far as I'm concerned, Patreon is directly blocking aid to a country defending itself from a pathological aggressor.
It is incredible how easy it is for Russia to spread their misinformation about their invasion on Ukraine without any bans or blockades, I have been reporting multiple times accounts that were clearly created by trolls to spread FUD and none of them "was breaking community standards".<p>On the other hand perfectly factual posts are regularly deleted from groups that track situation on Ukraine and do this in a honest way without pro-soviet bias, e.g the posts from Polish Obrona Pro (Defence Pro) Facebook group are deleted randomly, users are threaten to be banned without any explanation, except "blah, blah community standards".<p>From what I see all those "algorithms" and "AI" and "moderators" that are supposed to filter out spam are very easy to game by the party with sufficient resources.
If anyone has a twitter account (I do not), would be worth mentioning in that thread, to those who are deleting their accounts, to also formally request to have their personal data removed, this would give them a massive pain in the balls (if they complied that is).
Not surprising.Most of the westerners in the corporate world(especially on the far left end of the spectrum) and people near that sphere of influence are fetishists of either the russian regime or the russian way of doing business.They talk about 'dangerous' people as being pro-russian because it's easier to de-legitimize people this way: the "russian bad" rhetoric is long-known since the atomic period of propaganda.And the same goes for other demographics and ideologies(conservative?->nazi; etc.): the problem with this approach is that when russians ,other such groups, or actual nazis are actually doing something bad, the people (western masses) are already insensitive to the same rhetoric and thus won't give a crap, that's why i stated at the beginning that such authoritative voices, often media(i.e. MSM) are closet russian sympathizers.This is and could somewhat further be fixed with social networks that are not censorious, and we've already seen such tendencies of people informing themselves from multiple channels and creating their own opinions, but the issue still exists.<p>And to fully acknowledge the situation:the right makes the opposite mistake aswell: they confuse neocon and post-modernist american imperialism greed, such as the Middle East situation, with a military alliance(NATO) that's talked about purely in a defensive manner here.NATO does not and will not invade Russia because that's not the intended goal.This is why eastern europeans liked Trump more than Biden, because we remembered the Clintonian geopolitics.<p>Same happened/happens in Canada: normal people are declined the opportunity of a help-hand on the pretext of "terrorism" as similar talking points.
Russian visitors of my foss project (<a href="https://www.filestash.app/" rel="nofollow">https://www.filestash.app/</a>) now see the message of peace address to them by president Zelenskyy: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwzb_JX7u04" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwzb_JX7u04</a>
> For those still looking to help, Ukrainian journalists have recommended several charities<p>Why journalists should be deciding where funds should go?
"It is a violation of our policies, and so we have removed the page."<p>What a shit fucking response.<p>Following a policy that you arbitrarily created yourself is not a reasonable justification for anything.