funded Riseup.net

[dwright 25]

A lot of you are probably familiar with Riseup.net already, but for those who aren't they're a volunteer tech group in the US who aim to provide secure services to activists. They provide email, I think 2 VPN servers, and other things. If you want an account you can apply and they may accept depending on what you put. They run on donations. I for one would be very pleased if subscribing to Air helped Riseup.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

I would be very pleased if subscribing to Air helped Riseup.

 

Agree, I like their email service, too

[Staff 9973]

Hello,

 

your suggestion looked very good and a part of the donations budget has been delivered to riseup.net. More news soon in the dedicated "Mission" page https://airvpn.org/mission

 

Kind regards

AirVPN

[CultureVulture 30]

Great news.

[dwright 25]

Wow it's amazing to come here and read this. Thanks so much!

[PirateParty 49]

Riseup is an awesome service. Nothing much more to say

[Staff 9973]

More news soon

 

We submitted a help ticket, according to the recommended method to talk with riseup.net team, about a week ago.

 

The best way to get in touch with us is to fill out a help ticket. Please visit user.riseup.net to create a ticket.

 

We gave them information about our mission, a link to this topic, and informed them that we want to support riseup.net mission, with a donation and coupons for their activists.

 

We performed the donation (1340 US $) on the same day.

 

The day after, we received an e-mail, the only feedback we ever received:

 

We regret to inform you that your request for a riseup.net account was not accepted.

 

We think you are doing important work. Unfortunately, we have limited capacity and so we prioritize those projects which most closely align with our political goals.

 

It looked like an automated reply, so we replied that we don't need any email account or any access to their services.

 

We also entered their IRC chat and informed them that we are still waiting for a response to our ticket.

 

No reply in a week.

 

No further action from us is planned.

 

Kind regards

 

[dwright 25]

I see, that is a shame.

 

I know from personal experience that the ticket method can be very slow. I asked a tech support question and it took many months. I guess because they're a volunteer group who are probably even more overwhelmed since the NSA leaks.

[CultureVulture 30]

Riseup is being recommended by heaps of sites interested in web privacy and anonymity as a free, "anonymous" email service. This is not its core mission. It is supposed to be providing an email system that can be used by and for activists. It's not about providing an email service to members of the general public who have no interest in activism at all. I hate to think the pressure these guys are under right now. It would be a nightmare just trying to filter their way through all the requests for email accounts. I also know they have been occupied trying to work through the implications of the NSA leaks. It's not surprising that they are taking a while to sort this out. I hope they do, though.

[bobber6 8]

I commend airvpn for donating to riseup !

Odd response from them though.

I guess there must be some miscommunication on their part.

Last week i applied for a acount ( with motivation) , and it was granted within a day; i guess my views line up with theirs...

If you look at the help ticket section; very few queries are answered, i guess they just have not enough time/personnell

[CultureVulture 30]

When I first heard that AirVpn was going to make a contribution to Riseup, I was very happy, because I support the work of Riseup. On reflection, though, I am thinking that this might in fact be politically difficult for them. There are loads of VPN services out there, but I wouldn't want Riseup associated with some of them. On what basis would they justify taking money from some but not others? Have they got the time and energy required to be fielding disputes about why they accepted a donation from one and not another? Is it at all worth it? Or should they just accept donations from whoever lobs up with money? I don't see them doing this, for obvious reasons. It could be that they have made a strategic decision here; the only problem being, then, the lack of a clear explanation for that decision. I might see if I can find out....

[Staff 9973]

Hello!

 

It's not surprising that they are taking a while to sort this out. I hope they do, though.

 

Maybe they did not notice our ticket.
But it's strange that they did not notice either the PayPal transaction email or their financial balance.

 

I guess there must be some miscommunication on their part.

 

We hope so. But it doesn't matter in the end, see below.

 

On reflection, though, I am thinking that this might in fact be politically difficult for them. There are loads of VPN services out there, but I wouldn't want Riseup associated with some of them. On what basis would they justify taking money from some but not others? Have they got the time and energy required to be fielding disputes about why they accepted a donation from one and not another? Is it at all worth it? Or should they just accept donations from whoever lobs up with money? I don't see them doing this, for obvious reasons. It could be that they have made a strategic decision here; the only problem being, then, the lack of a clear explanation for that decision. I might see if I can find out....

 

If this donation is a problem they can simply refuse it and we can allocate the same money to other projects.
No rejections, no 'thanks' until now.

However your thoughts are very interesting.

Look at the pinned topic of this forum: https://airvpn.org/topic/10122-guidelines/

 

Periodically a maintainer proposes the delivery of a fund portion to the chosen projects.

In order to achieve total transparency, we would like to tie this project to AirVPN promotion but at the same time we wish that it is handled by the community to guarantee that it is a real and impartial work. Therefore we aim to build a staff of moderators that don't work with AirVPN Staff and can manage and decide how to distribute the funding availability that AirVPN service can allocate to no-profit projects.

 

We have a monthly budget that is allocated to support other projects that accomplish our mission.
A part of this budget is managed by us to some specific projects, like our support to TorServers.net, with monthly recurring donations.

Another part of no-profit budget is available to the objective of this forum: support with spot donation (sort of monthly award) those projects that our community likes or suggests.

For this reason, we delivered the donation to RiseUp only a day after this topic was opened.
We don't know this RiseUp team, but it doesn't matter: some people of our community suggested that, there was no other candidate in March 2014, so it was accepted.

Note also that we delivered the donation before any contact with RiseUp team, simply because we don't ask anything in exchange, not even to be listed as supporter.

Yes, we list our donations in our mission page. But this is for transparency, because (as explained in the pinned topic) we hope that our community can decide how to distribute our donation budget every month.

We don't hide that this initiative can also imply a return on our image and reputation and a marketing tool. But if it is the case, we soon increase our donation budget. A nice loop in support of Net Neutrality and against censorship.

We are waiting for our community feedback. If necessary, we can anyway close this initiative and raise our donations to TorServers.net.

Kind regards

[PirateParty 49]

That is very troubling that they didn't respond to such a large donation. I'm not sure how many tickets they get per day but hopefully they will respond. 

[CultureVulture 30]

Staff explanation seems fair enough to me. I hadn't had time before, but I am following up on this today.

[CultureVulture 30]

OK, I have heard from Riseup collective. As I suspected from my first post, the problem was that the contribution had not been flagged yet. The collective members are volunteers who also hold down full time jobs, and the person in charge of this task simply hadn't gotten to it. They are very apologetic about the delay, and very thankful for the contribution also. So, I think, problem resolved. Thanks again, staff.

[CultureVulture 30]

And I think, there was also some confusion because the ticket might have been confused with a ticket requesting an email account so it wasn't prioritised. Anyway....should all be good now.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

OK, I have heard from Riseup collective. As I suspected from my first post, the problem was that the contribution had not been flagged yet. The collective members are volunteers who also hold down full time jobs, and the person in charge of this task simply hadn't gotten to it. They are very apologetic about the delay, and very thankful for the contribution also. So, I think, problem resolved. Thanks again, staff.

 

Prove it. <3

[CultureVulture 30]

Hehehehehehehehehehehe...... Naaaaaah, I've got nothin' but my naive optimism. ;-)

 

By the way, gigan3rd, the Riseup collective has a message for you.......they ask...... Is German beer as good as they say? ;-)

[CultureVulture 30]

And in their own words, gigan3rd.......

 

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Dear gigan3rd,

Is german beer as good as they say?

Love,

Riseup
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[OpenSourcerer 1435]

Is german beer as good as they say?

 

Erm.. yes it is. But not everywhere.

 

Some advice: If you want to travel to Germany just to try out the beer never travel to Northern Germany. This too includes Berlin (by the way, there's nothing interesting in my opinion except for the Bundestag and a few embassies). Try going to Munich instead, the beer is excellent and there is more to explore. And if you are there don't forget to go to the Hofbräuhaus. It's quite expensive but worth the money. You will see why.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

FYI: In their most recent newsletter, Riseup declares they will run out of money next month. Original message:

 

[en] English – Riseup financial update
================================================
The news is not good
————————————————
We hate to be bad news birds, but we need to tell you that Riseup will run out of money next month. We had a number of unexpected hardware failures, lower-than-expected regular donations, and a record year of new Riseup users which puts more financial pressure on us than ever before.
We need your help to keep things going this year, so we are starting a campaign to ask Riseup users to give us just one dollar!
Can you give us a dollar? There are a lot of easy ways to do it: https://riseup.net/donate
Is it really worth giving just a dollar?
————————————————
Yes! It might seem inconsequential, but if you and every Riseup user gave us just one dollar, that would  fix our current financial problem.
Riseup is now delivering over a million messages a day, but we need your help if the messages are to keep flowing. You know the importance of alternative infrastructure. You know the importance of communications systems that put people before personal tracking and corporate profiteering. We *need* at least 5% of our users donating monthly to be sustainable. Can you become a monthly donor?
Spread the word
————————————————
Are you friends with a carrier pigeon? Do you know morse code? Are you skilled in building signal fires? Help us spread the word about this campaign with your community. You can even use the internet, that might work too.
Not everyone can afford a dollar to donate. We provide services to so many people and social movements around the world, many in places where even one dollar is a lot of money. If you can give us one dollar, maybe you can cover one other person by giving two?
In Europe it is now easy to give to Riseup with a simple bank transfer! Tell your friends that it is finally easy.
Thanks!
————————————————
Really! Truly! Thanks for all that you do, day in and day out, on our long march toward making the world a better place. If you can, help us continue our work, too. That would be excellent. https://riseup.net/donate

[zhang888 1066]

Maybe they should rethink their business model alltogether, maybe take some ideas from Protonmail which is both free and premium,

and according to what it looks like is financially independent at this moment.

Begging for donations when you have almost no added value usually does not work.

[flat4 79]

 

Is german beer as good as they say?

 

Erm.. yes it is. But not everywhere.

 

Some advice: If you want to travel to Germany just to try out the beer never travel to Northern Germany. This too includes Berlin (by the way, there's nothing interesting in my opinion except for the Bundestag and a few embassies). Try going to Munich instead, the beer is excellent and there is more to explore. And if you are there don't forget to go to the Hofbräuhaus. It's quite expensive but worth the money. You will see why.

 

I hope your last sentence implies nakid ladies or men (whatever floats your boat) 

[flat4 79]

Just wondering, @staff, did they take your donation on the first try or did you have to resubmitt?

 

Also I understand that they are volunteer and have full time jobs (so do the rest of us) but as someone who has also volunteered when someone gives that amount of money, you stop give it your full attention.

 

Just saying..

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

I'd say, something like Posteo. It's just 1 euro a month for encrypted email, contacts and calendar, and alas!, they're still in the market. They even deny donations and ads.

But yes, something must definitely change.

 

I hope your last sentence implies nakid ladies or men (whatever floats your boat) 

 

I was referring to the fact you'd never want to drink something else after you tried their beer...