As someone else said, Elon Musk can fund the truckers out of pocket change; I hope he gets mad enough to buy GoF_Me and shut it down.

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/02/06/gofundme-and-the-nags-head-light-how-a-company-is/

GoFundMe’s suspension of millions to support protesting truckers in Canada shocked many, particularly when the company initially announced its intention to distribute the money to other charities. It was less of a surprise for those of us who have criticized the company for years over its use of the platform to target and block funds for conservative and libertarian causes. Indeed, the company has revised an old practice known as the “Nag’s Head light” in luring the unsuspecting into what has become a liberal lockbox on funds.

In the Carolinas, locals would sometimes tie a lantern under the head of a horse to lure ships to their doom. Thinking the light was a ship in deep water, the ships would unwittingly sail into the shore rocks where they would be stripped of their cargo. That is how the resort town Nag’s Head, North Carolina got its name.

GoFundMe is the ultimate Nag’s Head operation. It draws conservative and libertarian causes to its shore with promise of being a neutral crowdfunding site. At its creation, the founders pledged to change the world by “disrupting giving” by handing control to average people in supporting others with common values and views.

The easy-to-use technology and need for crowdfunding services quickly expanded the company into a multibillion enterprise. However, it soon became clear that the company was using its control of funds to advance its own political agenda. Worse yet, the company effectively coaxing groups into fundraising campaigns on its site, only to freeze accounts before the money could be used.

In the case of the Canadian truckers protesting Covid mandate, the company perfectly replicated the Nag’s Head Light. It allowed people to donate over $10 million, thinking that they were helping the truckers and presumably not donating to other sites. It then suspended the account and announced that it would distribute the money to other charities in consultation with the truckers. Once the ships crashed on its rocks, it was literally going to salvage the wreckage.

The announcement was breathtakingly moronic and led some to call for criminal investigations. It turns out that soliciting funds for one reason and then using them for another (“better”) cause is considered fraud in some circles. The company quickly backtracked. However, it still refused to allow the donations to go to the truckers. It will return the money. In the meantime, critical time and support has been lost for those who trusted the company.

It is a familiar pattern for the company in allowing people to send money for badly needed support only to lock the funds away at the last minute. The company’s record has moved it well beyond any plausible deniability that it is not using access to donations as a way of advancing its own priorities.

Consider GoFundMe’s freezing of funds for legal defense funds. One would think that funding litigation costs would be unassailable since it is an effort to secure judicial review of the underlying merits of a case or a cause. After all, if a cause is based on disinformation, a court can quickly sort out the truth. Right? Wrong.

GoFundMe froze donations needed to support Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense because he was accused of a violent crime. However, that is the point of a trial. He was accused of a crime and he was entitled to a presumption of innocence. … Rittenhouse was, of course, acquitted. Then GoFundMe released the funds after they were no longer needed to support his trial.

…Moreover, critics have noted that the company has supported legal funds supporting rioters in various cities as well as an appeal for the 2020 Seattle Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP.)

The hypocrisy of the company on such issues has been flagged repeatedly, including by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

It does not matter. Like the social media companies, GoFundMe controls billions in funds and has become the very scourge that it was designed to combat. Rather than empower average people, it now operates more like a corporate overlord on what causes are worthy of crowdfunding.

Notably, GoFundMe relied on accounts from the Canadian government to label the truckers as violent despite the fact that the truckers are protesting the government. The protests have been largely peaceful, particularly in comparison to the “mostly peaceful” protests in past summers (by groups allowed to crowdfund by the company). It is the same pattern used by other companies in serving as a conduit of government priorities and policies.

…
The inclusion of GoFundMe in this increasingly united front is particularly chilling. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, money is a critical part of free speech. You speak through your donations and those funds then support further free speech and associations. As companies like Twitter actively silence dissenting voices, GoFundMe has served as a chokepoint for funds. The result is that many are finding it not only difficult to use social media to voice their views but to use crowdfunding to garner the support of like-minded people.

GoFundMe can clearly redefine itself as a progressive company. It has free speech rights like those who it is seeking to silence. Like many in the media, the company has largely written off half of the country. The problem of the company is when the crowd in its crowdfunding business goes somewhere else.

If GFM wants to rescind a program like this, the very least in acceptable behavior is that they are required to return the money to the donors at GFM’s own expense.

I’m just waiting for the Libertarian/Neo-Con types that are going to tell us that GFM is a private company so they can do what they want to do blah blah blah…

Prosecution and civil liability lawsuits are what should be the response to this kind of behavior by a private company.

While allowing a campaign to raise funds for the man in Waukesha, Wisconsin who drove his SUV into a collection of youngsters and old women.

Note, we take it for granted that ‘the Left’ considers it impermissible a priori for a Deplorable to finance a legal defense in a criminal case, and one which incorporates a cognizable claim of self-defense captured on video. That’s tantamount to a declaration of war, as is the collusion between prosecutors and judges in the J6 cases. As is HR1. What we all do about that is anyone’s guess.

And, yes, I do blame ordinary street-level Democrats for this. I am not aware of one in my social circle who has or ever would forthrightly condemn the efforts to sabotage Kyle Rittenhouse’s attempts to exercise his constitutional rights, or expressed any dismay at all about the abuse of the J6 defendants, or objected to the erosion of ballot security. Put it in front of their nose, and you’ll just get sophistries and evasions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTATJjWSwP8

The personal account linked above makes clear that the truckers are not honking at night. They stop at 6 PM. More lies from the usual suspects,.

https://spectator.org/montreal-lockdown-riot-canada-trudeau/
Some Canadians have had enough of the lockdowns.
by EVAN MAGUIRE
April 13, 2021, 1:29 PM

Statistics Canada recognizes that not all of the country’s 14,000 excess mortality deaths in 2020 were due to COVID-19. Substance abuse and medical delays are other possible reasons for the increase.

Canada’s losses have come not only in terms of life but also of civil liberties. Churches have been particularly hard hit. While regulations vary based on province and city, there have been widespread limitations on capacity in indoor churches, social distancing requirements, and health inspections.

The situation in Alberta has been particularly prominent in recent weeks. In Calgary, a Polish Canadian pastor chased out police when they tried to shut down his church on Easter weekend.

A few hours away in Edmonton, GraceLife Church has been met with severe force. The church has been barricaded and put under the control of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The local health services have shuttered the facility until it can meet arbitrary standards of 15 percent capacity. In response, GraceLife stated on their website that “The science being used to justify lockdown measures is both suspect and selective. In fact, there is no empirical evidence that lockdowns are effective in mitigating the spread of the virus. *We are gravely concerned that COVID-19 is being used to fundamentally alter society and strip us all of our civil liberties.” Protesters gathered at the church on Sunday, with some praying and others knocking over the fencing.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has pushed social welfare spending, stimulus bills, and increased health-care spending in response to the pandemic, building up a half-billion-dollar deficit (in Canadian dollars). Once the borders open up, Trudeau plans to use mass migration to supposedly improve the economy, even though Canada has an unemployment rate near 8 percent.

The behavior of the Trudeau’s government in the past year is yet another global example of the dangers of government power becoming over-involved in the decisions and lives of its citizens. Powers assumed by the government in times of crisis are rarely given away voluntarily when they’ve outlived their usefulness. Ending such powers will require pushback, and fed-up Canadians are making that clear now.

*The now famous Johns Hopkins report is late to the game.

When you don’t listen to the reasonable objections of reasonable people, you get bigger protests — although still quite reasonable, despite the whining of the Ottawans deprived of the comforts of life and undisturbed sleep.
Somehow, the governments around the world understood that when BLM was the organizer.
Now, not so much.

In re the lawfare tactic: yes, truckers are “businesses” and have a vulnerability that Antifa obviously does not. BLM is a “business” as well (a crooked one, apparently), but no one ever filed a lawsuit against them for damages, that I know of.

It’s a great tactic, in theory, because you can chip away at their resources and attack them individually, as with the J6 Gulag prisoners.
However, as I noted on another thread, the truckers have a lot more in their favor in this game: organization, supporters, and (assuming someone takes over for GoFundMe the embezzlers), resources.

If the suits begin to seriously threaten the truckers’ livelihoods, there will be a backlash that will take Canada down completely.