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Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

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Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#91

Post by the_duke »

nspkr wrote: post #78
jelv wrote: post #52

Liberapay takes 0% https://liberapay.com/ It's European non-profit and open source. It's funded by the donation on it's own platform.

Very careful with this option, as it's based in the EU which means free speech is not considered; that makes it a very dangerous option for podcast and youtube creators, opinion bloggers, etc.

I see you have a deep understanding of European laws, which remarkably are also exactly the same for all 44 countries end for all 28 EU members.

Care to enlighten us?

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#92

Post by yorwba »

nspkr wrote: post #82
DuckyC wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that there isn't free speech in the EU? What are you basing this statement on?

Many countries in the EU have blasphemy laws and the European Court of Human Rights says they are okay: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr... If someone criticised Jesus Christ in their podcast (for example), they would be putting Liberapay at risk. I don't believe Liberapay would allow that, so they'd just ban the user. That's what makes Liberapay a risky option.

That podcaster might be ordered to cease the blasphemy, and if they don't comply their website might be blocked, but I don't think that puts Liberapay at risk if they don't operate as a publishing platform but only handle payments. That woman didn't lose her bank account, did she?

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#94

Post by Asooka »

tapland wrote: post #31
pravda wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but Apple and Google have monopolies. Not a "gamer", so I don't really know what "Steam" is/does, but I suspect they must have some kind of moat. I'm not sure that people are comfortable with Patreon taking a 10% cut. I'm not happy about eBay taking a 10% cut, but they have a monopoly. Jack Ma, please bring Taobao to USA!

Steam is, despite there being a lot of competition, the de facto one stop shop for digitally distributed PC video games (and is in itself a kind of DRM protection). I think that a large proportion of gamers would be happy for almost all of the competition to disappear in favor of getting everything on the Steam platform.

That's because Steam's community features are second to none.

I don't really want a monopoly, though, having more than one store is better in the long run, even if it sucks having to register for multiple services. At least it's not like streaming where your costs go up the more services you register for.

The ideal would be if Steam could let other publishers plug in their platform for a much smaller cut of the profits and handle sales, forums, friends, wikis, with the other publisher handling distribution, marketing, etc. Or at least if it could function as OAuth and I could use my Steam profile on other publishers' services, carry over my friends list, maybe achievements, etc. Of course that still leaves Valve in a monopoly position, but I think it's an ok compromise.

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#95

Post by koonsolo »

pravda wrote: post #67
koonsolo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell me which one of those things you named are a monopoly, and I will name the closest competitor. I'm thinking about Craigslist, Snapchat, Vimeo, Mixer, etc. Don't confuse market leader with monopoly. Before Steam, you had several casual portals (all competing with each other). Do you know which cut they took? 70%. Do you know why platforms nowadays take 30%? Because it's well worth the 30%, that's why. And…

> Do you know why platforms nowadays take 30%? Because it's well worth the 30%, that's why. That is not the way things work. Why does Apple take 30% of sales? Because Apple prices at the profit-maximizing percentage and because Apple figures that the profit-maximizing percentage is 30%. Lower, and they leave money on the table. Higher, and sales volume goes down. Ever hear of something called "consumer surplus"? A ga…

Price is set by supply and demand, nothing else.

30% is the price, set on the non-monopoly market. I don't get what you are complaining about.

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#96

Post by DanielBMarkham »

I remember when reasonably smart cellphones first came out. You could hook them up over USB and change things like ringtones or backgrounds. It was fun.

Then manufacturers and cell phone companies started realizing the money train they were on. They made billions by selling this same crap to people who didn't know how or have the time to customize their own phone.

As it turns out, billions of dollars tends to get people's attention. Now those same companies are locking down PC boots, taking out headphone jacks, and all sorts of other things to "help" us have better computers. Each of them will involve trying to keep those cash cows lying around, maybe grow the herd a bit.

My point is this: smart people caught on to this bullshit. Facebook, Patreon, and the other fan/audience aggregation systems are doing the same thing, just with a different platform. I'm not sure, but I think the folks are catching on faster this time around. We're going to end up with an internet where the tech elite use services that actually facilitate their lives while the rest of the world use various subscription and "helper" services that try to extract as much money as possible from them at every turn.

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#97

Post by [deleted] »

nspkr wrote: post #88
vetinari wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not worry; all these companies are private enterprises, so in US, freedom of speech doesn't apply anyway. Patreon/Paypal/Visa/Mastercard/Twitter/Facebook will drop you like a hot potato, once you publish something mildly controversial.

So what? If Liberapay was based in the US, they could choose to continue hosting you if they wanted to. In the EU, they don't have that option.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#98

Post by AstralStorm »

pravda wrote: post #67
koonsolo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell me which one of those things you named are a monopoly, and I will name the closest competitor. I'm thinking about Craigslist, Snapchat, Vimeo, Mixer, etc. Don't confuse market leader with monopoly. Before Steam, you had several casual portals (all competing with each other). Do you know which cut they took? 70%. Do you know why platforms nowadays take 30%? Because it's well worth the 30%, that's why. And…

> Do you know why platforms nowadays take 30%? Because it's well worth the 30%, that's why. That is not the way things work. Why does Apple take 30% of sales? Because Apple prices at the profit-maximizing percentage and because Apple figures that the profit-maximizing percentage is 30%. Lower, and they leave money on the table. Higher, and sales volume goes down. Ever hear of something called "consumer surplus"? A ga…

Lucky you that there is more than two colluding "competitor" steel stations.

In the white darn city here, the prices are within 1 cent of each other and everyone somehow raises them whenever there is any excuse.

Differences between cities are up to 20 percent. Sometimes (not considering externalities) it would be worth driving much farther to buy petrol. Few people do it.

Local monopoly or collusion is as good as global one. For Google Pay, the local is whole main Android store.

Where they do compete with cheaper alternatives (e.g. in South Korea), the premium is lower. But only there.

Facebook essentially guesses a price on their advertisement monopoly on their platform. The price is not set by competition nor by demand, but by belief in value added (which is only partially responsive to supply and demand), just like in most stocks.

I recommend reading on the concept of elasticity and substitute good, as well as idiosyncracies of human economical decisions.

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#99

Post by makomk »

kosievdmerwe wrote: post #81
duskwuff wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple and Google provide significant added value in their app stores: distribution, discoverability, licensing, testing (at least in Apple's case)... etc. Patreon is not that. At its heart, it's primarily a service for collecting donations. There is some content hosting, but that's kind of a secondary feature.

What content can you host on Patreon? I only really have experience with authors and text is cheap to host. Can you host video?

Nope, Patreon doesn't host video. Generally I think people upload their Patreon-exclusive videos to YouTube as unlisted and use that as a free hosting service.

Re: Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5%

#100

Post by Asooka »

ebalit wrote: post #93
hokus wrote: post #70

Its nice to see the multinationals agree 30% is a decent taxation level.

Even 30% of the revenue, while most taxation is based on the profits only.

They've learned their lesson - taxing profits means everyone will pull off bullshit accounting tricks to make their profits as close to 0 as possible.
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