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An Open Letter to Patreon

openlettertopatreon.com

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Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#161

Post by the_common_man »

timthelion wrote: post #116

As a white hetro male who consumes porn, as do %90 of us white hetro males do. I do not understand how it can be "fine" and "modern" for us to watch porn. But not "fine" and "modern" for the women who produce it to be paid for it. Porn is one of the few products out there that provides real value, real stress relief, and has no environmental or moral downsides. Porn is better for the environment, animals rights, and,…

People only watch porn because it is anonymous. This is no different from piracy. People steal only because they think they think they won't get caught (or give some arguments about DRM to convince themselves stealing is OK which is completely beside the point). Most people won't pay for porn if it was non-anonymous. So, I don't agree that it has no moral downsides. I so agree with your comments on icecreams and fidget spinners. They are terrible too.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#162

Post by Torgo »

kuschku wrote: post #84
kbart wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopoly in what? There are plenty of sites that specialize in sex cams, private shows and amateur porn, so why not just go there? There are legitimate reasons to avoid adult content in your private site as it is very easy to get into serious problems where as site owner/administrator your are legally responsible: underage actors, abuse, prostitution claims (where it is illegal) etc. just to name few.

I meant payment processors. MasterCard, VISA and PayPal all will refuse to do business with you, or pressure you into changing your business, if you're found to be in the pornography or prostitution business. Even if that's legal in your country. And in Sweden, banks are now collecting fees for getting cash, or paying in cash, of about 10$ each. So you can't really do anything as customer or company without MasterCar…

Porn is a multi-billion dollar industry. Maybe the big players should start a payment processor.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#163

Post by corobo »

JCharante wrote: post #129
corobo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What's wrong with normal? The more popular site is the normal one when it comes to finding content creators. Hatrons or voaters aren't going to be triggered by the use of the word "normal".

Peoples' triggerings aren't my concern, my concern is not conveying what I mean accurately and getting bogged down in the nitty gritty of how I say things rather than what I'm saying

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#164

Post by Torgo »

kaffee wrote: post #100
aargh_aargh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit is not in the software or service per se. It's in the network effect the existing service already has.

I agree with @erlend_sh. Patreon _does not_ have much in the way of a network. Its recommendations (if you like this, you'll like that) are typically awful. They're so bad in fact, that I suspect there's some sort of legal/liability constraint. Right now Patreon is a remarkably dumb system with really high fees. That there isn't a serious alternative already makes me suspect that this is isn't a really high profit si…

Patreon had a competitor, Subbable, which acquired a bunch of Youtube stars before Patreon bought them.

>bitcoin-based competitor

The problem here is that bitoin is push payment rather than pull, and reducing friction is critical to a subscription system. Bitcoin would require a user taking action every single month to pay, and on time.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#165

Post by darklajid »

klipt wrote: post #159
lmm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon, where consumers have a direct relationship with individual creators, would seem like the perfect way to avoid those issues though.

What if Patreon wants to be family friendly, and allowing the selling of porn on Patreon ruins that image? Seems like a business opportunity for another website to take that niche, a "Porntreon" if you will.

"Family friendly" and morality are not global concepts though. Things that might be ok in NL/DE might offend half of the US, things that the US doesn't care about might offend secular countries in the middle east.

If you want to be a global platform, morales are tricky to get right.

I believe it's best to let the consumer decide. Force people to mark their content as adult and hide adult content by default. Maybe with age verification to enable it, for countries that want that?

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#166

Post by jlg23 »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #140
timthelion wrote: post #116

As a white hetro male who consumes porn, as do %90 of us white hetro males do. I do not understand how it can be "fine" and "modern" for us to watch porn. But not "fine" and "modern" for the women who produce it to be paid for it. Porn is one of the few products out there that provides real value, real stress relief, and has no environmental or moral downsides. Porn is better for the environment, animals rights, and,…

There is a moral downside to porn. There's plenty that is uploaded without the person's consent (sometimes by a bitter ex). There's also a lot of stories out there of people being coerced and made uncomfortable to continue filming when they didn't want to. I imagine this is the minority, but there's definitely issues within the porn industry.

> There's plenty that is uploaded without the person's consent (sometimes by a bitter ex)...

That is not pornography but a crime.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#167

Post by danharaj »

zoul wrote: post #114
Certhas wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. This is ridiculous and hypocritical. People somehow seriously claim that the authors should hide what community they represent, hide the unintended discriminatory effects of the policy changes, and not be so emotional about losing their livelihoods, because it makes them feel uncomfortable to read an emotional appeal in an open letter.

I don’t want people to “hide what community they represent”, but I also don’t want them to use that fact as a bargaining chip instead of arguments.

Part of a negotiation is stating which parties are involved and what their considerations are.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#168

Post by token_throwaway »

This letter reflects very poorly on the writer(s). You would think Patreon is the difference between life and death for them (they basically say as much). You would think that without Patreon, nobody would be interested in their creations. I'm sorry but -wow-. You've got other ways to collect payments from people who support your work... and if you have a fanbase already, I'm not sure where the problem lies in moving off the platform. In fact, that would send a much stronger message to Patreon, at which point the financial and traffic hit would probably cause someone up the line to reconsider their position. And if not, better for both parties anyway.

At the end of the day, Patreon is a private company that owes nothing to anybody except its shareholders. And I don't blame them for implementing subjective NSFW filters, that is their prerogative, and they didn't set out to create a camshow site at the end of the day.

Adults whinging is becoming the white noise of the internet.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#169

Post by timthelion »

the_common_man wrote: post #161
timthelion wrote: post #116

As a white hetro male who consumes porn, as do %90 of us white hetro males do. I do not understand how it can be "fine" and "modern" for us to watch porn. But not "fine" and "modern" for the women who produce it to be paid for it. Porn is one of the few products out there that provides real value, real stress relief, and has no environmental or moral downsides. Porn is better for the environment, animals rights, and,…

People only watch porn because it is anonymous. This is no different from piracy. People steal only because they think they think they won't get caught (or give some arguments about DRM to convince themselves stealing is OK which is completely beside the point). Most people won't pay for porn if it was non-anonymous. So, I don't agree that it has no moral downsides. I so agree with your comments on icecreams and fidg…

Lets ban icecream!

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#170

Post by vacri »

Certhas wrote: post #91
nippples wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's important to include the bit, then why stop the list there? What about apostates? Autists? Fat people? People who are otherwise unemployed? I agree with the other poster. This feels like not only emotional blackmail, but tired, overused emotional blackmail. You can very reasonably bring up the angle of people who depend on the platform for their income without dragging around the identity politics baggage wit…

Maybe it's just important to include that bit, because it actually reflects the experience of the authors? The community that signed the letter? Are those groups you mention actually disproportionately affected by this change? Either way, this whole letter consisted of a few sentences that brought in the identity angle. These sentences correctly show that this change disproportionately affects some (minority) communi…

> The anti-PC crowd immediately latched onto these few sentences and now HN top upvoted thread is all about how the letter made the HN crowd feel uncomfortable.

I'm pro-PC and have routinely come out in defence of the concept here on HN. Last year there was a rash of MRA crap on HN, and I was arguing against it regularly. I also have no problem with porn itself, and view it myself. Now, all this being said, the opening paragraph in the article is ridiculously overwrought and childish. It reeks of tribal politics - if you can't understand why "the other side" never accepts what you have to say, it's because of hyperbole like this. It's the left-wing's version of "Won't somebody think of the children" that gets stuck everywhere it can, regardless of veracity[1]?

Keep in mind that this is what the letter is basically implying: "Patreon has to support pornography because blacks/queers/disabled people will die if they don't". As someone else pointed out, it's positioning Patreon to be painted as a bigot if they don't back down. Patreon can't put in a rule saying "pornography is okay, but only if you're PoC/disabled/homosexual", so what the letter is actually demanding in real terms is full support of pornography. Did you notice that just like Patreon and the Supreme Court, the letter author did not provide a clear definition of pornography versus adult content, to perhaps guide Patreon? Since it's a fuzzy line no matter where it's drawn, the only way to satisfy the author is to allow porn outright.

The author is free to make those claims - business is business, and stretching the truth is pretty normal when your business is under siege - but we shouldn't be taking the comments on face value and defending them. They should be scrutinised like any other business missive.

> These sentences correctly show that this change disproportionately affects some (minority) communities.

The sentences claim it. They don't show it, correctly or otherwise.

> When cis white men get threatened with losing their livelihoods by over-active PC campaigners, do you complain that the fact that they are cis white men features in the story?

How often do those stories come up? Which livelihoods are being lost by over-active PC campaigners? But yes, here on HN if an article does lead off with a sob story, usually someone will complain, particularly if it's long-form journalism. Hell, people routinely complain about sensationalism in article titles here, often without even visiting the link.

--

[1] Possibly the most remotely-detached of these arguments I've seen so far: in my home state, the right-wing party argued against a new public holiday with "won't somebody think of the children". One more public holiday than the next state over > businesses will go there instead > your children won't have jobs. Seriously. "Won't somebody think of the children" used against a public holiday...

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