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An Open Letter to Patreon

openlettertopatreon.com

11–20 of 245 posts

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#12
post #9

Hatreon is an alternative that has no speech policing.

It's a good idea with an awful name on it. My first flash thought was a place for funding hate. It did click a moment later that it's a play on the Patreon name more "I hate Patreon" but it just feels.. wrong.

>My first flash thought was a place for funding hate.

That's unfortunately not a bad guess. Go check out some of their "featured creators". It's pretty much the bottom of the hate speech barrel.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#13
post #10
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why is the payment processor doing that? Because they're afraid of the government. Why? Because the government doesn't like boobies. Why? Puritanism...

I said why in the sentence before the one you ran off with. Because they get higher than usual chargebacks. This is due to the "I shouldn't have spent money on that" feeling when the user is done with the service. You'll also have fraudulent cards because there's no physical location they need to order things to to test that the card works. Probably an aspect of underaged users using parents cards due to the nature o…

Is there data on that? I've heard this theory before but never seen any evidence to back it up.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#14
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that. Chargebacks are the problem. As soon as you mention to a payment processor that you might be taking for adult content they drop you like a hot brick.

And why is the payment processor doing that? Because they're afraid of the government. Why? Because the government doesn't like boobies. Why? Puritanism...

No, it's because chargebacks are a nightmare scenario to deal with for the most part.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#15
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said why in the sentence before the one you ran off with. Because they get higher than usual chargebacks. This is due to the "I shouldn't have spent money on that" feeling when the user is done with the service. You'll also have fraudulent cards because there's no physical location they need to order things to to test that the card works. Probably an aspect of underaged users using parents cards due to the nature o…

Is there data on that? I've heard this theory before but never seen any evidence to back it up.

I don't have any sourceable data on hand unfortunately, this is what payment processors told me when I was trying to set a service up

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#16
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that. Chargebacks are the problem. As soon as you mention to a payment processor that you might be taking for adult content they drop you like a hot brick.

And why is the payment processor doing that? Because they're afraid of the government. Why? Because the government doesn't like boobies. Why? Puritanism...

Well, up until recently, they were indeed afraid of the government. Let me introduce you to operation Choke Point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#18
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good idea with an awful name on it. My first flash thought was a place for funding hate. It did click a moment later that it's a play on the Patreon name more "I hate Patreon" but it just feels.. wrong.

>My first flash thought was a place for funding hate. That's unfortunately not a bad guess. Go check out some of their "featured creators". It's pretty much the bottom of the hate speech barrel.

Ah so it suffers from (or targets) the reddit->voat problem where a userbase is comprised solely of those rejected from the normal site[].

[] Please forgive the use of the word normal, I couldn't think of a better word. "Default site" or maybe "usual site" might work better

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#19

The answer is we need competition. These "curated, private commons" from amazon to twitter to youtube to facebook to ebay to all of the above cannot and should not replace the free market, which they are trying to do. What is happening here is exactly why we decided Trusts were a bad thing back in the day, although these are "smaller" companies, one point of failure can mean death for a host of consumers. That or reg…

I think there are such strong network effects for many of these companies that competition is unrealistic.

They are in many ways like power grid operators: Infrastructure. They should be regulated as such.

Edit: Since there are some downvotes here, let me clarify what I think regulation should look like:

Visa/Stripe/PayPal/Amazon/Facebook have to service every business that is not illegal under non-discriminatory terms. (Like F/RAND for technical standards.)

Simple rule. One they can point to when moral guardians come knocking and demand they stop doing business with the devil.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#20
I agree with the overall point of shady limitations between porn and adult content leading to discrimination, but this kind of self-victimization :

> Not only that, the most vulnerable among us – disproportionately queer, trans, disabled, people of color and those whose first language is not English – are literally scared for our lives.

Hurts the whole speech.

Is it possible to have this (valid and important) debate without emotional blackmail ?

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