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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Aug 19, 2026, 9:36 PM

    If anyone was stalking my GitHub Sponsors page, you might have noticed something sus appeared there recently. On June 7, OpenAI signed up as a sponsor as a custom $50/mo level.

    This was unsolicited and uncommunicated and I only found out about it through the usual GitHub emails about sponsor activity.

    Naturally, I was and am uncomfortable with keeping this money, but I also do not see any good coming from blocking it or returning it to them. It may be a small amount for them to use for additional harm, but it would still be giving them something.

    So, I've been looking for somewhere to forward it.

    2/N

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Replies

  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Aug 19, 2026, 9:40 PM

    Today I contacted DAIR (somehow I missed the info on their website 🤦) about the possibility of forwarding these funds to them, and got back a nice response right away, so I have initiated a recurring donation of $50/mo to DAIR.

    I have no idea if someone from OpenAI will see this at some point and be embarrassed and cancel their sponsorship, but as long as they don't, I'll keep this recurring donation active passing it on. 😁

    3/N

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Aug 19, 2026, 9:41 PM

    If anyone else is in the same position of receiving unsolicited AI money clearly aimed at softening your anti-AI stance or credibility to your community, I'd encourage you to do the same. It was really easy to setup, except for...

    4/N

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Aug 19, 2026, 9:44 PM

    ...if you're using a Gmail address with the recurring donation to DAIR, Google sends the thank you mail with the link to manage/cancel your recurring donation to the spam folder. 🤬

    I have a hard time believing that's not intentional malice from the company that fired and tried to silence Timnit Gebru.

    5/N

    Screenshot of donation receipt email from DAIR, showing that Gmail has classified it as spam.
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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Aug 19, 2026, 9:59 PM

    One thing I should add is that this donation almost had to be targeted personally at members of a group I'm deemed to belong to, whether by human employees or their chatbots, not just mechanically.

    My GitHub account is almost entirely inactive and aside from a few very small projects I still have hosted on GitHub, it's primarily there as a place to receive donations.

    So there's no way it was just "top N active accounts", "accounts owning top N FOSS projects", or anything like that.

    6/N

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