Y’all, Venmo cooperates with police. Make sure when you donate to local organizers and groups, you just use emojis or vague subject lines. This isn’t to scare you but to protect you and other people.

Even if you don’t think you’re doing anything wrong, even if the cause is obviously just, even if it feels like the most insignificant and innocent thing — we still have no real capacity to understand what the police can and will deem illegal.

The police used a search warrant to get weeks and weeks of my Venmo transactions and it was laughably easy for them. Doesn’t matter if the transaction is private, it still shows up in your history, and you can’t delete transactions at all.

This is *not* to scare you away from donating !!! Ever !!! Payment apps are critical rn and you should absolutely be donating to local organizers and movements and sex workers and anyone else who needs it. Just remember to give yourself (and them) that extra layer of safety !!!

I have no idea about other payment and/or social media apps, I just know about venmo from my own personal experience. But idk my twitter’s next and if the police get search warrants for each of my social media accounts I guess we’ll learn

Some background on what happened with our local case, where people were threatened with felony charges for uh sending me 5 bucks on Venmo https://www.thedailybeast.com/dollar10-venmo-ensnares-utah-pol-in-americas-craziest-protest-case