PayPal: Where do we go from here?
A lot of people have been asking about the recent changes to the https://www.diasporafoundation.org/donate page after the PayPal situation, so I’d like to take a moment to explain.
When you first access the donation page, you will be asked whether you want to make a one-time donation via Stripe or alternatively via PayPal. The reason for maintaining the PayPal option is that PayPal apologized and has guaranteed that it won’t freeze our account again. More importantly, many of our users have asked that we keep the option. Since Diaspora* is community-run, we have done so.
Then, if you click on the “monthly” tab, you will see that you can only make recurrent monthly donations via PayPal at this time. Why is that? Well, we’re in the middle of organizing our beta launch and simply do not have the resources to allocate to incorporating recurrent monthly donations via Stripe. After launch, we will do so. In the meantime, we’ve included a caveat saying: “Note: The use of PayPal temporary until we move our monthly donations to Stripe.” We also have many users who use PayPal for recurrent donations, so we will continue to offer that option for them.
Finally, if you click on the “Bitcoin” tab, you will find the code needed to make Bitcoin donations. We added the possibility to make Bitcoin donations because many in our community requested this option. We’d like to thank CampBX for helping us get up and running so quickly. Without CampBX, the Bitcoin donation option would not exist. We’d also like to thank Mt.Gox, BitBew, and BitPay for their help.
One person asked us via email whether Diaspora* engages in Bitcoin trading with donations. We don’t. The only reason we include Bitcoin is so to give an alternative donation service for those of you who want to donate with Bitcoins. We accept Bitcoins and immediately convert them into dollars, regardless of their market value at the time of donation.
As always, should you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me at yosem@joindiaspora.com. We’re always happy to help.
Best,
Yosem
