Their legal page seems to implies that they comply with European money transmission laws. How about the US?
Liberapay – A recurrent donations platform
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Re: Liberapay – A recurrent donations platform
#62Their legal page seems to implies that they comply with European money transmission laws. How about the US? Recall: https://gratipay.news/gratipocalypse-42fd0ec0d9e8
May not directly answer your question, but Gratipay held funds in escrow and Liberapay does not.
Re: Liberapay – A recurrent donations platform
#63I'm surprised no one has mentioned Open Collective yet:
They have an expense claim transparency system for each collective and a cool gifting system for larger organisations to allow their staff to donate to different collectives from the company pool.
Re: Liberapay – A recurrent donations platform
#64Since Facebook fan subscriptions recently released. Another multinational corporation tries to claim 30% on the shoulders of developers/content creators/... I would rather see a "true" non-profit appear and claim this space. I also trust European non-profits more than American ones. The platform (Liberapay) lives on donations, supports different currencies, multiple languages, has multiple integrations ( Github, Gitl…
Well, Liberapay is for donations only, hence it is not a true alternative to Patreon and such. Also, you still have to pay the processing fees which, they say, should be below 5% on average. Nonetheless, it is pretty well-made and needed, especially since they care about internationalization.
> not a true alternative to Patreon
Translation: Not a paywall service.
Patreon is largely that function for people. The ability to just get donations existed long before. A tool to combine donations with access to exclusive stuff is the main focus of Patreon.
Personally, I see paywall-service as unfortunate because paywalls shouldn't exist. We need to find solutions (like patronage not tied to paywalls) to fund creative works that aren't restricted or freemium or whatever.
Re: Liberapay – A recurrent donations platform
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The platform has to determine what it's funding, because it's dependent on (a) local law (b) payment processors (c) the goodwill of the rest of its customers. Nobody's going to help someone fund their child-porn-to-Iran scheme, and nor should they.
Unless you call it something cool, like "Tor".
Tor is a security tool that might be used for evil purposes.
It's not a gun, Tor is not developed so that pedophiles can share child porn.
Re: Liberapay – A recurrent donations platform
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh, weird. On the creator side, they say: > We currently support processing payments through Stripe and PayPal. From that point of view, they could potentially get stuck paying creators operating in what Visa/MasterCard/etc. consider high-risk categories.
SEPA is option of Stripe.
However, Stripe is still a US payment processor, and will be subject to the same legal concerns as other US payment processors (such as those raised by FOSTA-SESTA for anyone involved in any sex work). While you might avoid Visa/MasterCard's rules that come from such a legislative environment, you won't avoid Stripe's.
Re: Liberapay – A recurrent donations platform
#67Note that Liberapay had to change payment processors, and in the process they changed how the payments work (https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/liberapay-status-update-a7...).
I get the impression that they're getting into a state now where there's probably an "expectations mismatch" between what people expect to be doing when they set up a recurring donation compared to how Liberapay actually works.
As the blog post mentions, now you can say "I want to donate $5/month" and you put in $60 to cover a year, but you have to pay that full $60 immediately, and the recipient also receives the whole $60 (minus fees) right away as well. After that point, there's not really any way for the donator to change their mind and stop donating after a few months, so it's more like a one-time donation with a reminder but still being presented as a smaller recurring one.
I think the problem is that overall it will end up encouraging people to make smaller donations for shorter time periods because they won't necessarily want to commit for many months or years' worth up-front. Then that means that they have to be sent reminders to re-donate more often, which feels more annoying and will probably result in people just letting their donations lapse more often than repeatedly renewing them.
Re: Liberapay – A recurrent donations platform
#68Note that Liberapay had to change payment processors, and in the process they changed how the payments work ( https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/liberapay-status-update-a7... ). I get the impression that they're getting into a state now where there's probably an "expectations mismatch" between what people expect to be doing when they set up a recurring donation compared to how Liberapay actually works. As the blog pos…
You diplomatically state this, but they fail to deliver on the most important thing of their service, surely there is a plan to fix this?
Re: Liberapay – A recurrent donations platform
#69Note that Liberapay had to change payment processors, and in the process they changed how the payments work ( https://medium.com/liberapay-blog/liberapay-status-update-a7... ). I get the impression that they're getting into a state now where there's probably an "expectations mismatch" between what people expect to be doing when they set up a recurring donation compared to how Liberapay actually works. As the blog pos…
That's quite a drawback. I don't mind supporting some creators and YouTubers through Patreon or YouTube membershops because $5/month isn't all that much. But if I had to make a decision to spend $60 to support them that much for the year, I doubt I would do that for most. Some charge $50-$100/month on Patreon for certain benefits too, I doubt many would be willing to pay $1000 up front for that for a year.
I'm surprised this is a payment processor limitation. I thought Stripe supported automatic recurring payments?
Re: Liberapay – A recurrent donations platform
#70Suppose Terry Davis had had a liberapay account, and a developer had read an article about him being in a bad way at some point in the past.
Suppose that developer then decided to donate some funds to Terry using liberapay.
Would such a donation have complied with French hate speech laws?