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Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

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171–180 of 433 posts

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#171

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 75,000 followers on YouTube and roughly 8.5 million views. Most people don't contribute even if they love your content. At least that is what my experience has been.

> Most people don't contribute even if they love your content.

You're making that too permanent, and too general. Right now, most of your viewers aren't contributing even though some of them love your content.

If you want people to contribute, you need to do specific things to get them to convert. It's the same as any other funnel optimization. Look at other successful channels, form hypotheses about conversion, and then test them.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#172
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "getting it right" in free speech. Either you allow free speech or you don't, if you are keeping one controversial thing but kick out the other you gave up on free speech. You can't kick someone out because you think its right and claim allowing free spech.

"People have indeed falsely shouted "Fire!" in crowded public venues and caused panics on numerous occasions, such as at the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall of London in 1856, a theater in New York's Harlem neighborhood in 1884,[1] and in the Italian Hall disaster of 1913, which left 73 dead. In the Shiloh Baptist Church disaster of 1902, over 100 people died when "fight" was misheard as "fire" in a crowded church ca…

And yet, no one has ever died from reading "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon had no liability in this situation. Patreon doesn't support the sale of software, and software as speech is a much murkier area than... actual, literal speech. This is effectively saying that investigative journalists shouldn't get too political in unpopular causes, lest they have their livelihood taken away from them. This is a suppression of free speech (not legally ofc) on a platform that syndicates politi…

> This is effectively saying that investigative journalists shouldn't get too political in unpopular causes, lest they have their livelihood taken away from them. This is a suppression of free speech (not legally ofc) on a platform that syndicates political news and opinions. 1) You are arguing now that journalists should have legal immunity. > Patreon had no liability in this situation. Patreon doesn't support the s…

1) There is a difference between legal immunity and the ability to raise funds -- for which she was banned according to the letter.

2) Her reason for banning, according to the company's letter was fundraising. That is certainly a type of speech.

3) Ships in the water circling to pick up people certainly makes them take riskier actions, or pushes the risk threshold low enough that people are willing to try.

I personally think that an open border solution would be much better for everyone. I also think that international law is valuable, and painting this situation in which these people are actually being transported by trafficking rings for at least some portion of their trip is not as black and white as you portray it. I'm personally against a modern day work and sex slave pipeline from Africa to Europe, and there is a non-negligible chance that that's what is happening here.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#174
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://…

> I've seen Patreon kicking people off their platform for political reasons […] Have you? Are you thinking of Lauren Southern? Or maybe It's Going Down? The explanation from Patreon is very reasonable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmcK6GvgVPs

Holy crap, Jack Conte founded Patreon?? I had no idea

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#176
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we need to live in the body of dog to understand "benevolence to dogs"?

I mean, probably, right? It's impossible to know. We can only be benevolent by our own standards. For example, the entire premise of the Matrix was AIs treating humans as benevolently as possible (in their minds) without inconveniencing themselves.

Actually I think the matrix example perfectly fits into the op dog example.

The machines invented the matrix because humans would riot if the simulation was too perfect or too shitty, so instead it was made perfectly normal. The machines didn't care either way, they just wanted to prevent more random "wakeup" events that were caused when the world was unrealistic.

So we can't know what is good for a dog other than what they tell us. Dog is biting us or whining, we're probably doing the right thing. Sure, you can throw in a bit of human empathy to account for the fact that we cuddle and pet our dogs, but we still know what they like based on what they're telling us.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, this also means you likely have much less in common with the person next to you.

Interesting. Who gets to decide what commons we all should share? Record labels and publishers? Youtube, facebook and twitter are already exercising undue influence in terms of algo changes to suggested videos or auto-play videos. https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/1/16072840/youtube-placing-l... It's a marketplace of ideas. Let them compete. Google deciding what's good and what's not is not fair to the people who want…

How is that undue influence? Did you arrive at youtube without any action on your part, was it auto playing when you logged in to your computer? Sounds like you dislike big media... just not enough to tune out.

tldrl; eat your own dogfood before telling others to do so.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#178

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 75,000 followers on YouTube and roughly 8.5 million views. Most people don't contribute even if they love your content. At least that is what my experience has been.

Do you ask them to contribute? If not, how do they know you expect/desire them to?

If you already have a witty zinger answer to those first two questions; how do you quantify "love your content"?

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but "we don't need evidence, our imagination is enough" is not anywhere near "very reasonable". The free speech is not necessary for the speech you agree with. It is for the speech, you don't agree with. Just because Patreon guys are fans of Antifa does not mean, they should bring their ideology to the business.

> Sorry, but "we don't need evidence, our imagination is enough" is not anywhere near "very reasonable". The video literally shows clips of behavior. The common theme of the video is “manifest observable behavior”. The video explains how actions, not speech, are what broke the terms of service. I really recommend you watch it. (Odd use of quotation marks – you directly quoted me, but completely made up what Patreon s…

> The video literally shows clips of behavior.

I see you are new to the game of presenting video clips out of context and manipulating the audience.

> The common theme of the video is “manifest observable behavior”. The video explains how actions, not speech, are what broke the terms of service. I really recommend you watch it. (Odd use of quotation marks – you directly quoted me, but completely made up what Patreon said.)

That video was widely commented, for example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_yIp7eQO1c

That odd quotation said what exactly Patreon did, not what they said they are doing.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#180
post #175

Laura Southern literally advocates for the death of migrants, pardon me for not giving a fuck about her losing an income stream.

And because many people agree with you, and many people don't, there is and will forever be a market for decentralization.
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