Facebook wants up to 30% of fan subscriptions vs Patreon’s 5% • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by erikpukinskis » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

duskwuff wrote: post #55

Deimorz wrote: post #11

I don't understand why people are acting like this is ridiculous and will obviously fail. 30% is the same cut that Apple and Google take for everything that goes through their app stores, including all in-app purchases. It's the same cut that Steam takes. It's the same cut that YouTube takes for channel membership. Twitch takes an even larger cut: 50% from subscriptions. It's extremely well-established that people ar…

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.

I seriously doubt Apple’s cost to administer the App Store is double digit percentages of revenue.

The 30% is a tithing to Apple for creating iPhone in the first place.

Patreon could sort of justify the same thing. Their real product is just the idea that anyone could be a monthly patron at all. That’s worth a LOT to creators. People didn’t think that way before Patreon.

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

#212

Post by ttsda » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #20

hereiskkb wrote: post #5

To actually see content creators sign up for this would be a sign of the times.

Well, Facebook has somewhat transparent guidelines for banning, and will be held accountable in public if they overstep. Patreon doesn't, your business with them as a creator is as safe as it is with PayPal if you're putting out controversial content.

Transparent? Never heard of zucc?

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

#213

Post by anth_anm » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

ck425 wrote: post #196

yorwba wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

While many EU countries duo have blasphemy laws, they're almost never enforced. They're laws that the majority of people find ridiculous and would be quickly removed if anyone started to actually enforce them. If Liberapay did block someone for blasphemy without being legally compelled, they'd likely face a huge backlash themselves. If they were legally compelled the law would soon be changed.

It's not like the US doesn't have a bunch of laws that violate free speech but are never enforced, and thus still sit on the books unchallenged.

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

#214

Post by anth_anm » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 8:15 PM UTC

ernesth wrote: post #84

nspkr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seeing as patreon, paypal, visa refuse clients because of their beliefs (alt-right) or their sexuality (which would be illegal in Europe), the US do not have free speech either

If the right doesn't like being censored by private corporations, maybe they shouldn't make deregulation and allowance of this sort of behaviour a core part of their beliefs.

Me, I love seeing these guys deplatformed.

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

#215

Post by anth_anm » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 8:17 PM UTC

paulnechifor wrote: post #126

morganvachon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US does have freedom of speech at the federal government level; i.e. the government is not supposed to repress speech. However, it appears the parent is intentionally conflating freedom of speech and a private entity's right to censor their own platform. One has literally nothing to do with the other; private entities in the US and abroad are largely free to run their platforms as they choose, including censoring…

You are conflating freedom of speech with the US first amendment. Freedom of speech is a principle. It applies to private companies as well. Voltaire didn't say "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, so long as it's not on Twitter, Facebook, &c in which case I'll beat you to death myself because private companies are entitled to censor their own platforms". What's the poin…

What Voltaire said is entirely irrelevant, this is a legal question.

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

#216

Post by erikpukinskis » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #74

agigao wrote: post #45

I miss those times when enthusiasm used to drive the net. Seeking profit in every corner of one’s life is demoralizing to say at least.

Most regular people call this behavior... survival. Anything else is an extreme luxury reserved for a minuscule fraction of the human race.

No, not really. And do the extent people do live that way, it’s a new phenomenon.

A hundred years ago most people had vast swaths of their productive life that operated outside of the economy. Housewives cooking meals, people fixing their own cars. Dances in barns. Etc.

Many “regular” people still live that way, which is where your statement is false.

Over the last 100 years there has been a concerted effort by business owners to displace all of that activity and replace it with productized equivalents in the economy:

You don’t cook, you buy frozen dinners. You pay to have your complicated car fixed. You don’t walk your friends dog, you get paid to do dog walking gigs. You gramma doesn’t cook you soup, you get it delivered. People don’t meet up in a barn, you go to a club and pay a cover.

This is new. And I’m not even saying it’s fundamentally bad for us. But for some of us it is disorienting.

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

#217

Post by jrockway » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 8:30 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #112

jrockway wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backups. Why commit to reliable destruction of data when you don't have to? Google has a guarantee on when your deleted data disappears from tapes in vaults, and it was something that every engineer at the company had to think about (not to mention a ton of work in actually implementing it). You may wish for Some New Startup with 2 engineers to do it for you, but it's hard, takes time, and nobody actually cares. Look…

> Backups. Why commit to reliable destruction of data when you don't have to? That argument makes no sense if you're talking about publishing, AKA making something available to the public.

I disagree. By default, the copyright holder reserves all rights. For the website to display that content, they need a license. When the owner deletes the content, it disappears from the website, so no license is required. This is a "happy path" that allows an agreement like "when you delete your account, you revoke our license to distribute your content, and we will comply with our legal obligations".

But the real world of production computer systems is not always the happy path. Consider the case where you delete your account, then the service suffers a database problem, and your content doesn't actually get deleted (failover to a replica, restore from backup, etc.) Now they are violating that contract with you. That is why they make the terms of the contract "in perpetuity" so the engineers can fix the production system incrementally, rather than saying "welp, there's a risk of a lawsuit if we failover to the backup, so we're shutting off the website and paying back the shareholders, everyone go home, we're done here".

Like I said, some companies take a middle ground where they really do guarantee deletion even if unhappy events take place at exactly the wrong time. It is possible. It's just not very economical.

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

#218

Post by michaelmrose » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 8:49 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #216

michaelmrose wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most regular people call this behavior... survival. Anything else is an extreme luxury reserved for a minuscule fraction of the human race.

No, not really. And do the extent people do live that way, it’s a new phenomenon. A hundred years ago most people had vast swaths of their productive life that operated outside of the economy. Housewives cooking meals, people fixing their own cars. Dances in barns. Etc. Many “regular” people still live that way, which is where your statement is false. Over the last 100 years there has been a concerted effort by busin…

Because the non discretionary parts of your life like rent/mortgage and medical is so expensive people don't have time after investing 50-60 hours to walk the friends dog.

Note that someone who only works 40 hours but has to commute 1.5 hours to and from work because they can't live in the city where the jobs are and spends 2 hours taking text emails while not actually at work has committed 65.5 hours of their time.

half hour getting ready for work, 1.5 hours driving there, 4 hours on lunch for an hour, 4 hours on, 1.5 hours getting home.

People working multiple part time jobs are worse off. They may be "working" 60 hours and committing 80.

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

#219

Post by spyhi » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 8:53 PM UTC

girzel wrote: post #27

Deimorz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon requires you to grant them an extremely similar license: > You keep full ownership of all content that you post on Patreon, but to operate we need licenses from you. > By posting content to Patreon you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, sublicensable, worldwide license to use, reproduce, distribute, perform, publicly display or prepare derivative works of your content. The purpose…

but... sublicensable?

Sublicensing is what legally enables things like rich media link previews (the kind you see on Facebook and Twitter) or APIs to exist. Yeah, theoretically they could use that to sell content, but in practice it's generally used to make the web more interoperable.

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

#220

Post by DesiLurker » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 11:09 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #19

networkimprov wrote: post #16

This could be a huge boost for Patreon. A significant fraction of creators will seek alternatives when they hear about the FB product, or after being burned by it.

The problem isn't in on the creator side, it's getting users to go, sign up and pledge. FB already has the users, it just needs to give them an option to sign up. Twitch streamers also use Patreon, but subscriptions and cheers on Twitch are more successful from what I can tell - it's closer to the content. If somebody is using FB as the primary way to release content, it's only natural to also do the donations/subscr…

there is no way in hell I am giving FB my credit card number. Idont need to give them another avenue to track me offline.