Unite the Right Legal Defense fund - Let's get it shut down!

[Destiny]

Ok. So, here is the URL to the crowdfunding campaign:

https://rootbocks.com/home/projects/unite-right-legal-defense-fund/

Warning: the rhetoric on here is gross, and for the love of the gods, don't read the comments. 

From reading RootBocks' site, they don't appear to give any fucks about this gross on their services: https://rootbocks.com/community-guidelines/ but it couldn't hurt to contact them:

https://rootbocks.com/home/contact-us/

Edit: They have doubled down on the gross on their twitter account, linked below. Contacting them isn't gonna do anything I'm afraid. 

The more likely path is contacting their payment processors, PayPal and Stripe. (https://rootbocks.com/home/getting-started/)

Paypal has specific verbiage in their AUP that racist, hateful bullshit isn't ok: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full

You can report violations of their AUP here: aupviolations@paypal.com. 

Stripe, I’m less sure about. Their list of prohibited businesses does not include hate sites, but given that they won’t allow porn, it can’t hurt to contact them, especially if we can get enough people contacting them to have them think it might have an impact on their bottom line. https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses / contact info support@stripe.com.

However, it appears that Stripe is a business arm of Wells Fargo, so I plan to also contact Wells Fargo and ask them what the actual fuck they are thinking, if I can figure out how the heck to do it, that is. Their site is a bloody maze.

Edit: try these: Twitter: Twitter https://twitter.com/messages/compose?recipient_id=23002858 or tag @Ask_WellsFargo on twitter. Facebook: https://www.messenger.com/login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.messenger.com%2Ft%2F152789358067261%2F%3Fmessaging_source%3Dsource%3Apages%3Amessage_shortlink or https://www.facebook.com/wellsfargo

Note: this rootbocks site is really slow right now. 

[Destiny]

Here's the email I sent:

Good evening!

I’m writing this to make sure you know that your services are being used on RootBocks.com, which is a site that is being used by “Alt-Right” groups to raise money for their various rallies and causes, most notably a Legal Defense Fund for the Unite the Right Rally that took place in Charlottesville last weekend, and numerous crowdfunding attempts to attend said rally. (See: https://rootbocks.com/home/projects/unite-right-legal-defense-fund/ , Introducing RootBocks: Censorship-Free Crowdfunding – AltRight.com , https://twitter.com/DrDavidDuke (note the retweet of the project by David Duke.) I’d include more links, but RootBocks is currently down due to their host cancelling their services for AUP violations, and they are in the process of moving to a new host.

I would assume as a responsible company, you do not want your services associated with hate groups, and would encourage you to cease providing services to groups that are spreading racial hate in our country. 

(My real name)
(My real location)

 

[Destiny]

FYI, based on their twitter, it appears that whoever Rootbocks's host was shut them down. 

https://twitter.com/RootbocksDotCom

Warning: gross ahead if you click. 

Edit: they are moving to a new host now, so they will be back by morning.

[MarblesMom]

OMG the tweets.  The hate.  I cannot even.  Asses.

[MarblesMom]

Email sent to PP.  No one should just stand by.  Let them know they need to address this.

@Destiny agreed on WF.  We used to have to bank with them and I hated it.  I ran screaming from the building first chance I had.

[GreyhoundFan]

@Destiny -- thank you for the info. Email has been sent to paypal. I will call the local WF tomorrow to see if they are involved with stripe.

[Destiny]

3 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@Destiny -- thank you for the info. Email has been sent to paypal. I will call the local WF tomorrow to see if they are involved with stripe.

Couldn't hurt to also email Stripe. 

[Destiny]

I got a typical we are investigating reply back from Stripe this morning. I haven’t heard back from PayPal.

[VelociRapture]

@DestinyThank you for the template. I'm changing it around a bit, but I'll be sending my own emails as well. Thank you for letting us know about this - I donated to the legal fund for real Americans (the ones who protested the white supremacists), but I was looking for another way to help and this seems like a great option for me.

ETA: Just emailed PayPal and Stripe.

[albireo]

Sent an email to PayPal so far, though I didn't catch that the host was down. Will do Stripe when I get the chance.

[Destiny]

I still haven’t heard back from PayPal yet. May email them again tonight if I don’t.

[GreyhoundFan]

"PayPal escalates the tech industry’s war on white supremacy"

Spoiler

PayPal, the popular online payment platform, announced late Tuesday night that it would bar users from accepting donations to promote hate, violence and intolerance after revelations that the company played a key role in raising money for a white supremacist rally that turned deadly.

The company, in a lengthy blog post, outlined its long-standing policy of not allowing its services to be used to accept payments or donations to organizations that advocate racist views. PayPal singled out the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacist groups or Nazi groups — all three of whom were involved in last weekend’s Charlottesville rally.

“Intolerance can take on a range of on-line and off-line forms, across a wide array of content and language,” the company wrote. “It is with this backdrop that PayPal strives to navigate the balance between freedom of expression and open dialogue — and the limiting and closing of sites that accept payments or raise funds to promote hate, violence and intolerance.”

Corporate watchdogs and civil rights organizations have pressured the company for years to ban such groups — to little avail.

“For the longest time, PayPal has essentially been the banking system for white nationalism,” Keegan Hankes, analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told The Washington Post. “It’s a shame it took Charlottesville for them to take it seriously.”

While PayPal has at times prevented some prominent hate groups from raising money through its platform, it also allowed at least eight groups and individuals openly espousing racist views to move money through its site before and after Charlottesville, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy organization that monitors hate groups.

“PayPal, one of the world’s largest online payment processors, was integral in raising money to orchestrate the event,” the Southern Poverty Law Center posted on its Hatewatch blog Tuesday, just hours before PayPal publicly banned such groups. “Organizers, speakers, and individual attendees relied on the platform to move funds in the run up to the ultimately deadly event.”

The Unite the Right march in Charlottesville ended with one person dead and 19 injured after a car driven by an alleged Nazi sympathizer crashed into a crowd of activists protesting the hate rally. Two state troopers were killed when their helicopter monitoring the demonstrations crashed.

PayPal’s decision to kick nearly three dozen hate groups off its platform is “long overdue,” Hankes said. He said his center has been lobbying the company for more than two years to take action against the groups, providing extensive lists and dossiers about them.

After a white supremacist killed nine black worshipers in a Charleston church in 2015, PayPal banned the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group that the helped inspire the attack. But the current purge is of an unprecedented scale, activists say.

“Our understanding is that this is just what’s the first to come, and that they are taking a hard stance,” Hankes said.

PayPal has agreed to removed at least 34 organizations, including Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute, two companies that sell gun accessories explicitly for killing Muslims, as well as all accounts associated with Jason Kessler, the white nationalist blogger who organized the Charlottesville march, according to a list provided to the Post by Color of Change, a racial justice organization seeking to influence corporate decision makers. 

Color of Change has been in private conversations with PayPal leaders since February to ban racist groups for using the platform to raise money. The organization spoke with PayPal representatives Tuesday afternoon and was given a list of hate groups to be banned.   

“Once the events of Charlottesville happened, we gave all the companies we had been talking to a final warning that we were going to be moving this campaign forward,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change. “Enough talking, cajoling and educating. This is not a question of policy. It’s a question of practice, and whether or not these companies are willing to actually put their values and policies into practice.”

 

[Destiny]

@GreyhoundFan WIN!

Now we just need to get Stripe to do the same.

[VelociRapture]

16 hours ago, Destiny said:

@GreyhoundFan WIN!

Now we just need to get Stripe to do the same.

I heard from stripe. They appreciate me making them aware... blah blah blah... cant comment on outcome because security... blah blah blah... looking into it and grateful I contacted them.

[Destiny]

I heard from stripe. They appreciate me making them aware... blah blah blah... cant comment on outcome because security... blah blah blah... looking into it and grateful I contacted them.

That’s actually different than what I got. It sounds like we are actually making a bit of an impact. Who knows, but I’m not gonna stop trying.