The Diaspora boys.

Diaspora, the Facebook competitor brought to you by Kickstarter and radical privacy advocates lecturing at NYU, has been trucking along in the Pivotal Labs office in California. But from the outside, things don't seem to be going so well. It's been about 18 months since the company raised a monster $200,641 on Kickstarter, and Diaspora is still squeaking out invites at a snail's pace. 

CEO Yosem Companys has abruptly left the company three days ago "due to personal reasons."

And Diaspora recently asked for more money, which we learn today via The Daily goes toward "stipends of $1,000 a month for housing and $2,000 a month for living expenses."

Wait a second--$3,000 a month? In the days of extreme lean startupdom, that sounds pretty cushy.

One Betabeat writer suggested perhaps the cash was going to Adderall. Seems unlikely—if it were, we'd have our invite by now.

Man, PayPal is totally The Man these days. The payments processor has put the freeze on everyone from Wikileaks to Occupy Wall Street, and most recently put a lock on about $45,000 for NYU-hatched anti-social network Diaspora’s community-donated funds. "Thousands of Diaspora supporters tweeted and emailed the payments company, urging that the funds be released," DIaspora's Peter Schurman said in a press release. "PayPal has sent an email to Diaspora* announcing that its account has been restored.  A PayPal executive also apologized repeatedly during a phone call with Diaspora."

Diaspora* had switched to a PayPal competitor, the startup Stripe, immediately following the freeze by PayPal. Diaspora will continue accepting donations via Stripe and PayPal.

Guess when you spend most of your energies taking on Facebook and Google+, PayPal seems like small potatoes. "We really appreciate the outpouring of community support for Diaspora* in the face of unfair treatment from PayPal.  The fact that we won so quickly just shows what an engaged, passionate online community can do," CEO Yosem Companys said in the release.