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Comment by orofino | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly, the letter states he's received over 150k in support. The rally.org campaign now states over 50k has been pledged. I'm not finding the campaign for support to be terribly transparent.

When receiving the link to the rally.org campaign yesterday (through pinbord on twitter or gruber) I thought it represented the entire universe of assistance Lavar had received. On top of that, the upper limit of the rally campaign keeps changing. Originally I saw 40k, then last nigth 50k, now this morning 96k.

I'm not saying that they're trying to be misleading, but as someone who is interested in this and is considering a donation, I was disquieted by the moving target at rally.org and the lack of transparency until this morning about how much had truly been raised.

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It doesn't matter that you haven't seen some other figure on rally.org (just one of the sources). It doesn't change the fact that Levison will almost certainly need the orders of magnitude more legal funds than what he received up to now.

Even having a case with the copyright trolls costs around a million. You bother about the thousands and about the totals which nobody claimed. And Levison had to shut down his own company.

Absolutely agree. All I'm trying to say is that I find the lack of transparency about the real 'goal' for rally.org and real total (which now we have transparency about) doesn't make me feel great about donating.

So where is it written that rally.org is supposed to publish the totals of funds collected via other channels? Based on what actually have you expected that?

It isn't. I think based on the giant bar saying X out of Y pledged that it represented the largest chuck of what had been pledged.

some people can always find an excuse not to help.

Yea, this response is expected. You can see below I'm grappling with myself, am I just nitpicking as an excuse or do I have actual concerns. It can be hard to tell sometimes.

About your first point: I think that rally.org is not the only source of revenue for the defense fund. There is also a direct Paypal link (linked in the Facebook post).

I'd seen the paypal links, I just assumed that it would be a drop in the bucket compared to what is visible at rally.org, not 2 times what you see there.

Perhaps I'm just nitpicking. I agree the cause is worth supporting.

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