Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 731 posts

Re: Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

#551

Post by iinnPP »

bko wrote: post #121
Mikeb85 wrote: post #27

Also keep in mind that in the backdrop of all this is the fact that our Prime Minister has called the protesters racists and misogynists. Probably inspiring someone who ran over some protesters in Winnipeg. Canadian news and politicians are desperately trying to denounce the protesters while ignoring the fact that Canada has some of the harshest Covid restrictions in the world at the moment, while the US has hardly a…

I'm concerned about 1st amendment and the soft power politicians have on freedom of speech (yes I know this is in Canada). When the head politician of a country essentially calls your group terrorist, wouldn't that put some pressure on social media or other organizations to restrict access, money or censor speech? Not all violations of free speech are literally police sending someone to jail for saying something. If…

It's a bit worse than that given that CBC(among others) have received 1.4B in funding from the government. CBC is just as good or bad(depending on your viewpoint) as CNN/FOX, if not better/worse.

It feels really bad to have comments removed for keywords like PoC when it's coming from your own tax dollars.

Re: Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

#552

Post by throwawaysea »

s5300 wrote: post #360
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tweet literally says it is for CHOP.

Which was something like the entirety of a half of a city block mostly centered around urban farms

It was not mostly centered around urban farms. That was only a tiny, tiny slice of Cal Anderson park. It wasn’t an actual farm either, but desperate PR - they threw down a few bags of soil a few inches deep, and obviously nothing came of it (in terms of food production). I am not sure the size of CHAZ even matters - it was a chokehold on the most frequented parts of Capitol Hill, the businesses in and near it, and the roads used by tens of thousands daily that run through it.

As for how safe it was - it was a lawless zone that gave safe harbor to crimes (including murder) and weapon stashes used by BLM/antifa affiliated rioters to attack the nearby police precinct. Here are some sources:

https://nypost.com/2020/06/20/my-terrifying-5-day-stay-insid...

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/father-of-man-kille...

https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/02/seattle-police-protest-we...

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-police-inv...

Re: Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

#553

Post by throwawaysea »

klyrs wrote: post #485
defaultname wrote: post #198

This sort of discussion never goes well, but using GoFundMe to finance occupations, especially across national borders , is an incredibly dangerous game. If a GoFundMe to harrass and harangue Ron DeSantis -- to effectively sponsor people to park outside his home and blast horns, among other things -- would he be okay with that? How about if Canadians paid millions for people to park on US interstates? Is that okay? T…

A missing piece of this is Canada's Bill C51 [1], which characterizes interference with critical infrastructure as terrorism . A significant difference between CHAZ/CHOP and these protests is the legal context. Looters bad, rah rah, but GoFundMe doesn't want to touch (legally-defined-as) terrorists with a 10 foot pole. But C51 was passed with an eye towards stopping anti-pipeline protests, and conservative Canadians…

This is a good point and if this law were enforced fairly and equally across all political causes, I would support it. Infrastructure is not, in my view, appropriate for political persuasion. It feels coercive in the same way ironically, that vaccine mandates are. However, I worry that often times these laws are enforced by whoever is in power in a one-sided manner. This was definitely the case in Seattle - we had a socialist city council member who helped BLM protesters break into city hall (a sort of manufactured protest event) but any hint of moderate or conservative protest and you can expect to be held to the letter of the law.

Re: Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

#554

Post by s1artibartfast »

culi wrote: post #539
s1artibartfast wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the most hyperbolic claims. Overthrow the government in this case means publicly and commit to repealing mandates, and set up a citizen group to review policy. Similar requests of governments happen every year in western countries. There are citizen oversight groups set up for failing school districts, police departments, and the environment. None of these Re overthrowing the government

> One of the main groups behind the protest is Canada Unity, which has opposed what it says are “unconstitutional” Covid rules. The group recently posted a “memorandum of understanding” to its website, saying that members plan to present it to politicians on Parliament Hill. The group claims that the leader of the senate and the governor general will sign the document to create a governing committee, which they claim…

I started a reply but realize I was just repeating what I said before.

This isn't radical. Organized protests for hundreds of years have demanded public written concession. This is the norm and what organized protest looks like

Re: Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

#555

Post by tandymodel100 »

blast wrote: post #489
tandymodel100 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> protesters racists and misogynists That's probably because of the Nazi and Confederate flags people are waving. In my opinion, they should cry it out or quit given Canada's 1 dose vaccination rate is in the 80% range.

The video of the confederate flag guy shows that he was shunned by the protestors. https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1487834109678395392

No post body was provided.

Re: Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

#556

Post by tandymodel100 »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #502
tandymodel100 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> protesters racists and misogynists That's probably because of the Nazi and Confederate flags people are waving. In my opinion, they should cry it out or quit given Canada's 1 dose vaccination rate is in the 80% range.

Last I heard, the convoy organizers put a bounty on the Nazi flag guy for any information leading to his identification. There is also video of protesters calling out the confederate flag guy and telling him to leave. Two assholes showing up to a protest don't represent the agenda of the entire group. The BLM riots had a much higher asshole ratio last time I checked.

No post body was provided.

Re: Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

#557

Post by throwawaysea »

dang wrote: post #420
throwawaysea wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is being forced. If you can experience significant losses or risks unless you comply, that’s being forced. You’re being disingenuous. It’s easy to see where this breaks down - per your logic a mobster running a protection racket isn’t forcing anyone to pay extortion money either.

Please omit personal swipes from your comments here. This flamewar is bad enough already. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My mistake. You’re right I could’ve made that comment without the personal swipe.

Re: Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

#558

Post by benmmurphy »

tomohawk wrote: post #235
defaultname wrote: post #198

This sort of discussion never goes well, but using GoFundMe to finance occupations, especially across national borders , is an incredibly dangerous game. If a GoFundMe to harrass and harangue Ron DeSantis -- to effectively sponsor people to park outside his home and blast horns, among other things -- would he be okay with that? How about if Canadians paid millions for people to park on US interstates? Is that okay? T…

I'm glad the governor is looking into this. Undoubtedly there are FL residents who contributed to this worthy cause via GFM, and then to have GFM suddenly say they're going to redirect the funds? Seems like some sort of fraud to offer a service for one thing and then change it after money has changed hands. GFM obviously realized this was a problem, so changed their minds and is providing automatic refunds. But this…

its a bit of dark pattern but i'm not sure if it is illegal. i suspect gofundme wanted the donations redirected so they would still receive the revenue the donations created. from their POV if they refund all the donations then they are paying fees for processing and refunding and not receiving any revenue. if gofundme wanted to still try and process the donations the more ethical option would be to set the default to be refund and allowed people to opt-in to have their donations redirected. also, my understanding is gofundme always planned to redirect funds to charities approved by the original organizers. i've seen some people claim that it was going to be charities approved of by gofundme alone but i have not seen evidence of this. i think in that case that would be deeply unethical.

Re: Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

#559

Post by Wiseacre »

defaultname wrote: post #324
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GoFundMe literally had no problem with CHAZ/CHOP and BLM protest funding in the middle of a pandemic.

So we agree, GFM should have nothing to do with any occupation, right? You agree with this, correct? You think that I'm some sort of partisan in this -- perhaps a projection -- and you caught me in hypocrisy. But you didn't. Financing protests is an incredibly dangerous game. I was against BLM justified violence and looting, as well as the various "free" zones. I was against the railway blockades in Canada (due to co…

You may have trapped yourself in a different web of hypocritical rhetoric:

Would you also be against civil rights sit-ins and GoFundMe being used to support those?

Re: Florida governor to investigate GoFundMe over Canada trucker donations

#560

Post by stjohnswarts »

throwawaysea wrote: post #249
defaultname wrote: post #198

This sort of discussion never goes well, but using GoFundMe to finance occupations, especially across national borders , is an incredibly dangerous game. If a GoFundMe to harrass and harangue Ron DeSantis -- to effectively sponsor people to park outside his home and blast horns, among other things -- would he be okay with that? How about if Canadians paid millions for people to park on US interstates? Is that okay? T…

The thing is BLM protesters broke laws. They started fires, destroyed businesses, trapped drivers in tunnels, attacked police, set fires in people’s homes, and declared an autonomous zone that claimed to secede from the country - and this is just from my city. GoFundMe happily allowed them to be funded while Facebook and Twitter happily allowed them to organize. Driving trucks and using the roads as they are meant to…

But they didn't tho. The people that did that were criminals taking advantage of the situation and lack of police. BLM protestors where nonviolent except when police tried to push them back and silence them. Sure they took over areas, but that's what happens during social movements. The damage was greatly exaggerated unrealistically by right wing news media.
Post reply on HN