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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

#191

Post by sprsimplestuff »

chrshawkes wrote: post #112
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 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.

it's a matter of how hard you're pushing your patreon, that's what I've seen from Youtubers w/ successful Patreons along with good perks

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#192

Post by tomcam »

chrisoverzero wrote: post #145
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://…

> 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

Former (thanks to you) Lauren Southern fan. That video is illuminating.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#194

Post by zanny »

kareldonk wrote: post #100

There should be no middle men. Only a direct P2P model will truly benefit everyone.

The only way to make it purely P2P is to make it non fiat based.

And when you try to do that, you have suddenly alienated 99% of your potential audience of supporters.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#195

Post by ouid »

arcticfox wrote: post #117
ouid wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, clearly Bitcoin is the only way Patreon can become a "good thing".

Was this serious or sarcastic? I agree with the sarcastic version, but I could also see the serious version being posted so I'm genuinely curious.

very sarcastic, but I'd still like to attract upvotes from people on both sides giving me the benefit of the doubt.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#196

Post by vinceguidry »

pjc50 wrote: post #68
vinceguidry wrote: post #33

If anybody at Patreon is reading this, here's some feedback. I spend maybe $20 a month on Patreon. The main thing keeping me from spending more is the interface makes artists appear more money-grubbing than they might want to. I don't want to scroll down someone's feed only to find half of the content is locked. This is a negative user experience and makes me want to click off the site and go do something else. Sugge…

I don't think they're ever likely to do that; the response to locked content that you want to see is to decide whether or not to pay for it. This is like complaining that Amazon shows you products you can't afford.

It's cool, I just won't use the Patreon website as a way to explore new creators, nor will I patronize creators that heavily tier their content. This means pretty much all of their adult content. If they knew how much time and money I've spent on that kind of thing, they wouldn't take my complaints lightly.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#197

Post by Hydraulix989 »

ngold wrote: post #190
dna_polymerase wrote: post #142

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.

Patreon is not a government body. If you host a bake sale open to everyone in your house, you can and should kick out the screaming lunatics that keep making a mess. The screaming lunatics are free to host their own bake sale at their house.

Even though it's not a governing body, consumers and content creators both might still value free speech in any kind of marketplace/middleman regardless.

Government is a sufficient but not necessary condition for upholding free speech.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#198

Post by syshum »

ngold wrote: post #190
dna_polymerase wrote: post #142

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.

Patreon is not a government body. If you host a bake sale open to everyone in your house, you can and should kick out the screaming lunatics that keep making a mess. The screaming lunatics are free to host their own bake sale at their house.

>>Patreon is not a government body.

Ok, and. Do you believe only governments are a threat to free speech?

Free Speech is a concept that every person, every company, every government should work to up hold.

While governments can and have been the source of censorship, that is not the only source.

Today free speech is under massive assault not by Government but by Society at large, society it seems have lost all respect for the concept, instead of holding the position of "I disagree with what you say but I will fight for your right to say it" people instead hold the idea "I disagree with what you say so I will boycott companies that hire you, or allow you to speak, or do anything to even tangentially associate themselves with you" and increasingly people have the position of "I disagree with you so I will punch you in the face"

This is very very scary and is direct assault on free speech.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#199

Post by jkeat »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #142
bryanlarsen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They kicked off 8chan but kept The Sarkeesian Effect so in my opinion they've got it exactly right. They keep up pretty nasty stuff in the name of free speech, but don't let you cross the line into doxing and the like. I much prefer having sensible humans at the helm than have something purely anonymous.

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.

I don't think Patreon or any similar company would take the inevitable PR blows to satisfy a few free speech purists, and those few lack the numbers to support an ungoverned alternative. It's unfortunate that digital infrastructure that relies on a critical mass often has to come to fruition in the form of a business.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#200

Post by IkmoIkmo »

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 suck, they're on the decline because everyone is discovering blockers, they pester 99% of the people with things they'll never click on, require a force against privacy, generates money for a small group of companies, and generally favours quanity-content over meaningful-content (i.e. a meaningful documentary impacting the lives of 5000 people will generate pennies, whereas a cat video that one million watch and may or may not have substantial impact, makes orders of magnitudes more money).

Ads are also lovely, I get your point... but let's not pretend it's not great to see an alternative which doesn't suffer (as much) from the above issues, and can build genuine interaction/support/community between creators and users of content.

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