Are we on a preditory site?

[sunflowerseed]

Don't misunderstand I've been here through the bush jr yrs.

I went to renew my star membership and I don't want a pay pal account so I clicked cancel and return to merchant to be hit with "Activate Account" adds that if I were older would have fallen for.

What's up with that?

I found the pay with cc card option, why don't we put that one first?

I realize this site needs financial support to survive but couldn't someone police the adds 🙃

With All Loveing Kindness and a sincere desire to make DU safe for all.

[NJCher]

1. I need to send in $$, too

Hate this payment process so bad.

I had a six year nightmare with PayPal back when Musk owned it.

[ananda]

2. Paypal really is annoying to deal with here.

I've tried to use CC only, and it always reverts
to Paypal.

I finally realized that I needed to cancel Paypal
directly from Paypal.

I no longer have a Paypal account (I hope).

[blm]

3. PayPal forced an account on me while donating here and

they ignore every attempt to cancel. I think DU should stick to cards and keep it simple. Jumping through the PayPal hoops probably turns off a lot of people who simply want to use their debit or credit card donate.

[multigraincracker]

4. Just send a personal check.

Takes longer. No mistakes.

[SamKnause]

10. That is what I do.

[calguy]

5. Maybe I'm just lucky, but...

I’ve had zero issues using Paypal for many years, and have always used it to make my donations to DU.

[eShirl]

7. same

I've had paypal ever since eBay first starting accepting it. No problems yet...

[milestogo]

6. preditory?

Is that like predatory?

[EarlG]

8. Unfortunately the ads cannot really be "policed" because

different ads are served to different people, which is how Internet advertising works. We don't know what ads are going to be served ahead of time -- they are served directly to you by the advertisers, and DU just gets a cut for providing the space that they are served in. We can attempt to filter ads after the fact, but this is kinda like playing whac-a-mole, forever. For what it's worth, we are going to be changing our ad provider at the start of next year, so that might make a difference to the quality of the ads, but the fact is that without advertising revenue DU would not make anywhere near enough money to operate.

Also unfortunately, rebuilding DU's entire payment system to allow for payments from a service other than PayPal is going to be an arduous and complicated process, which is why we've resisted doing it for so long. However, we are going to look into making this a project for 2026, especially since PayPal seems to be making it more and more complicated to make a simple payment as a guest, without creating a PayPal account.

To be clear though, you do not need a PayPal account to make a payment to DU. Instructions for doing so can be found here:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/125629039

[SamKnause]

9. I pay by check every year.