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Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

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Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#81

Post by mrkrabo »

eropple wrote: post #75
nostrebored wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lauren Southern. She was banned after throwing flares and attempting to block a ship (with no refugees on board) from leaving port to pick up refugees who she believes are being trafficked into Italy with the government's assistance. She was arrested for participation in this act of protest and then Patreon made the claim that her activities could have caused loss of life (which is ridiculous).

The alt-right is not "middle-of-the-road conservative". The alt-right is literal-not-figurative fascism with memes and, occasionally, good dress sense. If you consider white supremacists (oh, sorry, white nationalists (oh, sorry, ethno-nationalists )) to be "middle of the road conservatives," there is a profoundly deeper problem in your calculus.

I'm not a fan of the alt-right but the fact is that it's here to stay.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#82

Post by snerbles »

mason240 wrote: post #26

Corporation caught in a scandal over censoring political speech against the right? Better have the The Verge write a puff piece on them.

To be fair, Patreon also took down an Antifa publication ("It's Going Down") that was receiving ~$1,000 monthly.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#83

Post by PKop »

falcolas wrote: post #79
PKop wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen Patreon kicking people off their platform for political reasons, so it is not decentralized, though certainly more so than alternatives existing before Patreon. The evolution will converge towards content creators being funded through decentralized crypto currency platforms so that the money cannot be prevented from getting to creators if someone wants to pay them. Something more along the lines of https://…

Until crypto currency can be regularly used to buy everyday essentials like food and housing, I don't see this being a reasonable way to pay creators. And currently, Patreon can only stop you from using their platform; they can not stop you from being paid. I can see an argument eventually being able to be formed behind "people effectively only use Patreon, so not being on it is a death knell" (like YouTube), but it'…

It can easily be exchanged for fiat currency, and what isn’t spent will appreciate. I see only positives in getting paid with it.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#84

Post by nostrebored »

eropple wrote: post #75
nostrebored wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lauren Southern. She was banned after throwing flares and attempting to block a ship (with no refugees on board) from leaving port to pick up refugees who she believes are being trafficked into Italy with the government's assistance. She was arrested for participation in this act of protest and then Patreon made the claim that her activities could have caused loss of life (which is ridiculous).

The alt-right is not "middle-of-the-road conservative". The alt-right is literal-not-figurative fascism with memes and, occasionally, good dress sense. If you consider white supremacists (oh, sorry, white nationalists (oh, sorry, ethno-nationalists )) to be "middle of the road conservatives," there is a profoundly deeper problem in your calculus.

I didn't say that they are middle-of-the-road conservative. The alt-right is a meaningless catch all that currently means "conservatives or nationalists with strong opinions who I disagree with". For reference, I don't belong to the alt right, and I am economically conservative, socially moderately liberal.

What makes you think that Lauren Southern is a white supremacist?

Do you think that someone should be allowed to try to impede human trafficking operations?

Do you think that in the absence of these NGO ships going out to sea that so many people would be drowning on rafts in the middle of the ocean?

Because if Lauren is right, then you are suggesting that incentivizing a life-endangering risk for the purposes of being taken in to human trafficking is an ethical action.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#85

Post by mjevans »

egypturnash wrote: post #38
drewg123 wrote: post #16

Unless I'm missing something, they seem to only have a monthly contribution model. There are many times where I find a content creator helpful (for example a video tutorial on how to fix my broken washing machine), and I'd like to reward them. But I don't want to do it monthly, as I'll probably never watch another thing from them. So I'd like to be able to easily leave a one-time tip. Can Patreon do this, and it's ju…

Nope. There are two flavors of monthly payments - $x every month, and $y for every post the creator marks as a paid thing, up to a maximum of $z - but you can't leave someone a tip for that one cool thing. If a creator is on the $x every month scheme, then you could sign up for that, and then turn it off again. Patreon charges you immediately, so that you can't raid someone's paywalled content for free.

Well, you can, it just won't show up that way.

You sign up for a 'month' at the tip value, then cancel right away.

You should still be charged, they should still get their cut, and the subscription is canceled.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#86

Post by falcolas »

frik wrote: post #56
pillowkusis wrote: post #7

I have seen so many content creators go full time and create awesome work because Patreon gives them a format to incentivize their followers to pay them. The economics are beautiful — turns out just 1,000 people (a pittance on internet mass media websites) donating $5 a month will totally change the way you run your life. And even better, these artists are independent in a way no artist has ever been before. You’re n…

I have so many things that was paid by ads and now is behind a patreon-paywall. A plague. No thanks, bookmark deleted. Ads is a good business model, very unfortunate that greed created this current toxic ads crash browsers and waste way to much CPU cycles - Google & co need to step in and throttle the ads.

Ads are only a good business model for Google and co. As it stands now, only the obnoxious ads really get any eyeballs/clickthroughs, and click fraud is a huge issue that is disincentivising companies from even offering online advertising.

See the example in the original article for a great example: Peter Hollens was originally only ad supported, and was living the raman/couchsurfing life. He is now Patreon supported and making enough to support a family and touring.

I don't know of any solely ad supported channels making over $11k a month for 1-2 videos.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#87

Post by eropple »

mrkrabo wrote: post #81
eropple wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alt-right is not "middle-of-the-road conservative". The alt-right is literal-not-figurative fascism with memes and, occasionally, good dress sense. If you consider white supremacists (oh, sorry, white nationalists (oh, sorry, ethno-nationalists )) to be "middle of the road conservatives," there is a profoundly deeper problem in your calculus.

I'm not a fan of the alt-right but the fact is that it's here to stay.

Probably true. So we fight them. It stinks and it sucks, but it's on all of us to do so to the best of our ability and those of us who were dealt a more fortunate set of life's lottery balls (and I say this as an affluent, straight, white, cis American) have a duty to use our good fortune to help others.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#88

Post by toomuchtodo »

simlevesque wrote: post #60
toomuchtodo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Causes havoc with societal cohesion. > Social cohesion is defined as the willingness of members of a society to cooperate with each other in order to survive and prosper. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3341872

I'm not convinced that having something in common with someone corrolates with cooperation.

Please read the entire article if you have the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_functionalism

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#89

Post by porker »

drewg123 wrote: post #16

Unless I'm missing something, they seem to only have a monthly contribution model. There are many times where I find a content creator helpful (for example a video tutorial on how to fix my broken washing machine), and I'd like to reward them. But I don't want to do it monthly, as I'll probably never watch another thing from them. So I'd like to be able to easily leave a one-time tip. Can Patreon do this, and it's ju…

Wasn't that the goal of Flattr?

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#90

Post by makomk »

zanny wrote: post #65
pillowkusis wrote: post #7

I have seen so many content creators go full time and create awesome work because Patreon gives them a format to incentivize their followers to pay them. The economics are beautiful — turns out just 1,000 people (a pittance on internet mass media websites) donating $5 a month will totally change the way you run your life. And even better, these artists are independent in a way no artist has ever been before. You’re n…

I agree the model is the future, but a for profit American company running a proprietary web service cannot be the final solution. On one hand, patronage perfectly replaces all the draconian reasons modern IP exists as it does. Paying people to make the stuff you want them to make versus having them paid by someone looking to profit off government enforced scarcity on the produced work is much, much better for everyo…

Probably also why they still haven't fixed their handling of security reports since they left everyone's personal information on a system with a web-accessible root Python shell for over a week after being warned about said hole, and it inevitably got hacked and leaked all over the Internet. (A researcher was complaining about not being able to report a serious issue a couple of days ago.) As long as everything's centralised on Patreon and there are no meaningful alternatives there's no reason for them to care. After all, what are people going to do? For ordinary people, Patreon is where all the artists and content are; for artists it's where all the poeple funding them are.
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