Crowdfunding

How much would your family stump up for your ransom?

‘I can’t quite believe I’m here, having a steak dinner with a killer,’ writes Jenny Kleeman, as she sits with a hitman for the big opening to her book about the price we put on life. Someone paid to take lives is about to spill the beans on his dark trade. There should be tension. There should be jeopardy. We should be worried about Kleeman’s safety. So why does it feel a bit flat? It is difficult to find a hired gun, obviously. This one is John Alite, who was ‘a hitman for the Gambino dynasty’. However, he is now ‘a motivational speaker’ and ‘host of several podcasts’, and seems a lot more podcaster than hitman. Kleeman writes that he went to prison after he ‘pleaded guilty to charges that included two murders’.

Sorry, Freedom Convoy — fundraisers are only for left-wing criminals

From our US edition

It seems to be harder to donate money to the Canadian truckers protesting their country's vaccine mandate than it is to keep Hunter Biden out of a strip club. After GoFundMe seized millions of dollars raised on its platform for the Freedom Convoy, Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo stepped in and enabled donors to give nearly $10 million. GiveSendGo was promptly hacked and the personal information of 93,000 donors to the Freedom Convoy released to the public. The media — who largely resisted touching the Hunter Biden laptop story because it allegedly contained "hacked" information — jumped on the opportunity to shame and harass private citizens for donating to causes of which they don't approve.

quintez

The ethical minefield of crowdfunding for medicine

From our US edition

In an historical crowdsourcing effort, more than 23,000 people put together more than $2.2 million in just four short days to help a little girl that very few of them even knew, so she might have a decent quality of life. Now her family can finally afford one of the world’s most expensive medicines ever, it’s perhaps now appropriate to reflect on how we got here. At first, I assumed it was just another scam. Another email and WhatsApp message trying to raise money for a family in a difficult situation that nobody really knows, whose situation nobody could really verify, looking for a medical therapy or financial solution unlikely to actually help resolve their situation.

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