Stop trying to put words in my mouth & misconstruing my meaning & intentions.

I spent the better part of yesterday following the GoFundMe story, and digging into various parts of it.

The situation changed quickly over 24 hrs, and the information in this thread post actually became outdated within 30 mins of my posting it (but the thread was stickied fairly quickly after I had posted it, right around the time of the new information coming out).

Which is easy for you to find out, if you read one of my other comments further up in this thread, which links to an update about the situation.

So here's a timeline for you, as I see it playing out.

1. GoFundMe pulls some shenanigans, which most of us suspected they would, and use likely false pretences to "justify" their actions.

2. Their initial statement on why they were doing this, and how the money would be distributed (without the auto-refund engaged), had a few sentences in particular which were ambiguous.

It said:

Given how this situation has evolved, no further funds will be directly distributed to the Freedom Convoy organizers — we will work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers and verified by GoFundMe.

At the time, these were my thoughts on it:

Well, the wording from the GFM statement is a bit ambiguous on that point. It could be read as either:

• "[GFM] organizers will decide which charities it goes to", or,
• "[Freedom Convoy] organizers will decide which charities it goes to"

This was in response to what Ezra had said:

https://mobile.twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1489744172202569731

Ezra seemingly jumped to a conclusion about it (i.e., that the non-refunded money might go to organizations like BLM), which was one of two possible likely meanings behind GFM's ambiguous statement.

It also happened to be the less charitable interpretation (which is a reasonable position to take, given GFM's history & current actions).

Note that there was a thread with a few hundred upvotes here on GAW about Ezra's Tweet, as well.

This thread post that we are currently commenting on was a correction to that, once more information came out via GoFundMe's updated statement.

Did GoFundMe clarify their original statement, to make it less ambigious, at the request of the Convoy organizers, or Ezra's Tweet, or whatever else? Who knows.

Once they did clarify though, and with Ezra's Tweet still circulating, I thought it best to try to clear it up, with the newer information.

Returning to the timeline.

3. Within around 30 minutes of me posting this thread, the information in the thread became outdated. I made note of that in the comments here, and, by creating a new thread post. By this time, this current thread had already been stickied (or was shortly thereafter stickied).

The new information was that GoFundMe was going to now auto-refund the donations, rather than playing their games of trying to capture some of the funds for "charities" & divert part of it away from The Freedom Convoy.

There is different speculation as to GoFundMe decided to auto-refund, a few being threat of lawsuits and/or charge-back fees.

I'm not sure which of those was the cause, though I suspect it was more likely the potential lawsuits.

DeSantis threatened lawsuit over it.

Unless there is more recent information, it sounds like DeSantis and other Attorney Generals will be investigating GoFundMe because there was wrong-doing on their part.

GoFundMe's reversal in decision about the refunds might provide them some protection (not sure), though, perhaps the AGs will get GoFundMe for their political decision to undercut right-wing opposition (i.e., The Freedom Convoy).

At no time did I say GoFundMe didn't do wrong.

Part of the claim against them (which was still circulating), at the time of this thread posting, was simply not accurate.