A notice about Patreon and PayPal
Dear Faceswappers
If you are a supporter, either through Patreon or PayPal, firstly let me give you my sincere thanks for the support over the years.
Over the last few days my PayPal account has been frozen and my Patreon account has been shutdown. This was entirely without discussion or correspondence and the first I heard about it was when I was contacted by some Patreon members asking why I was issuing refunds. All members have been refunded from funds that they have donated to the project, to the best of Patreon's ability, whilst simultaneously my ability to access the site and my funds has been removed.
To say that this has come as a surprise would be understating it. After chasing, I have been given a reason why Patreon has been shut down (without going into specifics, they claim that I am in breach of their community guidelines. They have provided no evidence of this, and I vehemently disagree). I have, and always will, take a very strong ethical stance in how our software is to be used, and this has been my approach since Day 1.
The situation with PayPal is less clear, as they have just frozen my account, given me no reason and given me no recourse. I hope to find out more in the next few days.
The upshot of this is that all funding I received, from you, for the project over the last couple of years has now been removed from me and sent back to the original donors. As PayPal has also been frozen, I do not currently have means to have any of these funds returned to me.
I accept, now, that this money is gone. This is a significant blow for both me and the project. I appreciate that this is a big ask, and I am only likely to see a small percentage return on the original funding, but I would ask that if you do intend to return these donations to me, then please can you hold on to your refunds until I have a mechanism to receive your donations.
It goes without saying that this has been a huge and unnecessary stress over the last 48 hours, with currently no resolution in sight. If you feel so inclined to lobby on my behalf to Patreon, then this is unlikely to hurt, although if you do, I only ask that you do so both politely and factually, focussing on the ethical goals and environment that I have always tried to foster around this project,
Thank you again for your continued support and understanding.
Matt