What I've found interesting is the number of smut games and comics creators that are thriving (sometimes making their creator 6 figures a year) because of patreon.
Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture
201–210 of 433 posts
Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture
#202Corporation caught in a scandal over censoring political speech against the right? Better have the The Verge write a puff piece on them.
This is why we need a diverse ecosystem of these types of services. Patreon getting involved in policing the politics (not legality) of their users is annoying but not unexpected these days. What Patreon does as a service is absolutely nothing special and can easily be (and has been) copied, they just have what I assume is the first-mover advantage right now.
Or better yet a decentralized protocol to easily contribute to people you support that cannot be censored. A stable asset is still needed for this to work and a mature ecosystem around it. Not ready for mainstream, but if you are being denied service, there is always crypto currency.
Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture
#203Corporation caught in a scandal over censoring political speech against the right? Better have the The Verge write a puff piece on them.
The most worrying part is tech industry buying news media. Steve Jobs wife bought The Atlantic. Bezos bought the washingtonpost. As the news properties become cheaper and the money floods the tech industry, I'm sure they'll snap up some more.
We really need a more diversity media landscape. It's entirely liberal with pockets of conservatism. We need less liberal, more conservative and much more moderate media.
It's unhealthy for the media to be heavily skewed to one or the other side.
Not only that, we need this is academia and corporations and the banking sector. More diversity. More competing thoughts/ideas.
Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture
#204Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 personal…
> Her reason for banning, according to the company's letter was fundraising. That is certainly a type of speech. Fundraising to support a non-speech activity is not purely speech. e.g., if the activity is criminal, fundraising to support it is also criminal in virtually every jurisdiction on the planet, including those with the strongest free speech protections.
This is not necessarily true. I believe in the US, fundraising would make you an accessory, just as encouraging someone's criminal action where they have clear intent to commit a crime would be.
Fundraising for legal actions is certainly speech, and the effort Southern was supporting was in accordance with international law.
Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture
#206I like patreon but at the same time I'm a bit uncomfortable with how the interaction aspect of it sometimes works. Lots of artists are essentially charging for interaction with them rather than a product. From the article: "In this system, it’s almost impossible to separate a work of art from its creator — or, at least, its creator’s public persona. Is there a future for someone who wants to be a musician, but not a…
I support 5 people on Patreon. A blog, two comics, and two web serials. The blog (Wait By Why) and one of the comics (SMBC) do any kind of creator-marketing; the other comic (Kill Six Billion Demons) has rewards, but they're all KSBD content. Neither of the web serialists (Wildbow and Erraticerrata) have no rewards, and I've never seen anything from them.
It's probably depended on content type; a lot of the value of some art - say, paintings - comes from the artist; whereas the value of the genre fiction is entirely contained within the fiction.
So one group pretty much does need to market themselves as an artist, whereas the other just needs to market their art.
Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 cen…
Hi,
I'm a security engineer at Patreon. Like most companies we take security reports from folks via security@patreon.com and support@patreon.com. The dedicated security email is the quickest route to the security team.
We also have an invite only HackerOne program where we've invited the top reporters on HackerOne. When folks send us a valid report via email we also add them to our HackerOne program for reward (we've paid out >$17,000 to security researchers to date). As with any developing bug bounty program we're still improving it and we plan to open up our HackerOne program soon.
Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture
#208There's a part of me that just wants to set up a Patreon, link to it from a few places with enough content to have a profile (Github, Medium; if I ever finish an article), and if it starts getting traffic, do more of that content. See what happens.
(Unlikely to be anything without marketing, but, why not? Cost of the effort is low.)
Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture
#209Earlier 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.
Unless you want to take into account their reaction. An upset dog will growl and bite. A happy dog has certain behaviors. It is not robust communication, but it does exist.
In the beginning perhaps humans used dogs in an exploitative way, but many of the relationships now are mutual. Most dogs owners I know treat their dog as if it were "man's best friend", and they generally seem to reciprocate. The machines in the matrix wanted us for our value as a resource not for companionship and they certainly didn't respect us.
I think exploitation and benevolence are opposed if not mutually exclusive.
Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 respec…
I think what he meant is that the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to private actors, which uhhh, is true.