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Comment by hkai | Hacker News Reader

The question is not the money, the question is freedom of speech. A platform taking a commission is no big deal compared to the fact that it is allowed to determine what opinions are allowed and what aren't.

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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.

And guns aren't developed for murders. But that isn't the point I was trying to glibly make.

People contribute to lots of well-intentioned took that contribute some kind of indirectly to evil things.

I'm not sure I understand. The commission is a really big deal for people financially dependants on recurring donations.

Unfortunately, as long as they're relying on Stripe and PayPal there are 1imitations to what is and isn't allowed: there are plenty of things that US payment processors make hard to deal with.

Not trying to dispute your point, but out of curiosity: Is that actually true?

> Donations to [...] can be paid using: a credit or debit card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express), a Euro bank account (SEPA Direct Debit), or a PayPal account.

Could I send money through my regular European bank without using Stripe to pay on Liberapay? Does anyone know how they've implemented that?

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.

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