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Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

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Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#161

Post by paulgb »

nostrebored wrote: post #144
fweespeech wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She was arrested for participation in this act of protest and then Patreon made the claim that her activities could have caused loss of life (which is ridiculous). You don't get to go into other countries, break their laws, and expect private corporations to back you to the hilt. They are under no obligation to put themselves at risk for your beliefs. That isn't a reasonable expectation by any stretch of the imagin…

Patreon had no liability in this situation. Patreon doesn't support the sale of software, and software as speech is a much murkier area than... actual, literal speech. This is effectively saying that investigative journalists shouldn't get too political in unpopular causes, lest they have their livelihood taken away from them. This is a suppression of free speech (not legally ofc) on a platform that syndicates politi…

It's... not saying that at all. There is a difference between speech and action. There is a difference between risking your own life for a cause and endangering a political opponent's life for your cause.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#162

Post by ticviking »

eropple wrote: post #72
jblow wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this to be the case, they would have to be applying the principle to everyone equally, which they apparently don't. This has given pause to some people -- for example, Sam Harris, one of the top artists on Patreon, is evacuating the service (even though this is likely to cost him a fair bit of money) to avoid the future potential to be financially pressured over ideology.

Patreon's pretty down-the-line: don't advocate that people break the law and don't harass people. They've thrown antifa off their site. They throw alt-right shitheads off their site. We've met a couple times, Jon, and I've heard you speak; despite your public persona being prickly, I kind of got the feeling you were wiser than this.

When did the kick antifa off? I was under the impression they did so only after there was outcry when they kicked the alt-right off.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#163

Post by dave84 »

sqeaky wrote: post #134
erikpukinskis wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An AI would need to live a human life in a human body in order to understand what "benevolence to humans" means, and such an experience would make it functionally equivalent to a human with a cloud prosthesis.

Do we need to live in the body of dog to understand "benevolence to dogs"?

If we did we might not keep them as pets.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#164

Post by nostrebored »

lr4444lr wrote: post #158
eropple wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon's pretty down-the-line: don't advocate that people break the law and don't harass people. They've thrown antifa off their site. They throw alt-right shitheads off their site. We've met a couple times, Jon, and I've heard you speak; despite your public persona being prickly, I kind of got the feeling you were wiser than this.

So those people advocating for those non-violent but illegal sit-ins during the Civil Rights era would've been marked for expulsion too?

The thing is, the reason they gave her for banning in the initial letter they sent her is actually consistent with international law -- she was raising funds to send out a search and rescue ship which returns refugees to Libya.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#165

Post by quxbar »

just2n wrote: post #157

I'm in favor of directly funding creators. I hate everything about ads. That said, I don't see any real value Patreon provides over other payment services, especially given their cost. I definitely don't want politically driven judgement calls made on my behalf as to whether or not that creator should even be allowed to have my money, when that person hasn't actually done anything illegal. It's my money, and no busin…

I find it funny that the content creator you linked to still uses Patreon, despite them not providing any value over other payment services ;)

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#166

Post by jerf »

vetinari wrote: post #156
chrisoverzero wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've seen Patreon kicking people off their platform for political reasons […] Have you? Are you thinking of Lauren Southern? Or maybe It's Going Down? The explanation from Patreon is very reasonable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmcK6GvgVPs

Sorry, but "we don't need evidence, our imagination is enough" is not anywhere near "very reasonable". The free speech is not necessary for the speech you agree with. It is for the speech, you don't agree with. Just because Patreon guys are fans of Antifa does not mean, they should bring their ideology to the business.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately depending on your viewpoint, it won't matter for much longer. Once Patreon demonstrates the viability of the business, which I think it pretty much has, making a clone won't be that difficult. There's not a lot of technical moat here. (Having to deal with real money means it's certainly more than the HN-mythical "I could do that in a weekend!", but, still, it's definitely in the range of "hobby programmer in under a year with enough dedication" to get a fully functional site up and running to start.)

Speaking as a decently-large Patreon user and one that has advocated for it to the point of probably sounding almost like a shill on HN despite not being connected to them other than as customer... I don't use Patreon to use Patreon qua Patreon, nor do I do use any of their site discovery mechanisms to discover anyone. YMMV. I support the artists. If and when the artists I follow move around, I will follow them; I've already got a couple of recurring Paypal payments for people who work that way.

Ultimately Patreon's political preferences won't matter for much. It may superficially resemble the debate about Facebook/Google news filtering algorithms, but the situation is actually entirely different and the question isn't all that relevant in the long term. I think the fact that we're not talking about "free" here helps a lot.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#168

Post by chrisoverzero »

vetinari wrote: post #156
chrisoverzero wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've seen Patreon kicking people off their platform for political reasons […] Have you? Are you thinking of Lauren Southern? Or maybe It's Going Down? The explanation from Patreon is very reasonable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmcK6GvgVPs

Sorry, but "we don't need evidence, our imagination is enough" is not anywhere near "very reasonable". The free speech is not necessary for the speech you agree with. It is for the speech, you don't agree with. Just because Patreon guys are fans of Antifa does not mean, they should bring their ideology to the business.

> Sorry, but "we don't need evidence, our imagination is enough" is not anywhere near "very reasonable".

The video literally shows clips of behavior. The common theme of the video is “manifest observable behavior”. The video explains how actions, not speech, are what broke the terms of service. I really recommend you watch it. (Odd use of quotation marks – you directly quoted me, but completely made up what Patreon said.)

> Just because the Patreon guys are fans of Antifa […]

If they were such fans, I'm not sure they'd have removed IGD.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#169

Post by interurban »

raesene9 wrote: post #69
drewg123 wrote: post #16

Unless I'm missing something, they seem to only have a monthly contribution model. There are many times where I find a content creator helpful (for example a video tutorial on how to fix my broken washing machine), and I'd like to reward them. But I don't want to do it monthly, as I'll probably never watch another thing from them. So I'd like to be able to easily leave a one-time tip. Can Patreon do this, and it's ju…

Patreon has the concept of donation per creation rather than per month, which works well for people who produce things less regularly. It works pretty well for the ones I follow, but I guess it could be open to abuse if someone churned out a lot of stuff quickly (although I'd bet they'd lose a load of subscribers if they did that...)

You can place a limit on the monthly total of the per creation payments, probably this is to combat this exact scenario.

Re: Inside Patreon, the economic engine of internet culture

#170

Post by nostrebored »

paulgb wrote: post #161
nostrebored wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon had no liability in this situation. Patreon doesn't support the sale of software, and software as speech is a much murkier area than... actual, literal speech. This is effectively saying that investigative journalists shouldn't get too political in unpopular causes, lest they have their livelihood taken away from them. This is a suppression of free speech (not legally ofc) on a platform that syndicates politi…

It's... not saying that at all. There is a difference between speech and action. There is a difference between risking your own life for a cause and endangering a political opponent's life for your cause.

Who are her political opponents? The migrants? Their lives are being endangered now, once by governments (who have pulled out of S&R missions) and now by NGOs, and they are very likely being trafficked into Italy. People do not realize that the Camorra and Cosa Nostra are actual things, and that the Italian Mafia is not a joke.

You seem to think, completely without any substantiation, that Lauren Southern is disingenuous when she thinks that people are drowning on styrofoam rafts and being trafficked. You can think that you should have strict immigration laws and still care about people drowning in the ocean.

As far as I can see, she's a politically active woman in her mid 20s who has some unpopular political opinions that is being decried as a murderer for having a different assessment of the situation.

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