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An Open Letter to Patreon

openlettertopatreon.com

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Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#211

Post by angus-prune »

token_throwaway wrote: post #185
Certhas wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the other ways to collect payments? Paypal? Nope [1]. Stripe? Nope [2]. See the quote I posted here about someone who tried: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551817 Generally it's not rare to see websites restrict their content not because its illegal, but because it's impossible to collect payment for any of your content, if some of your content is deemed unacceptable by VISA/Mastercard, etc... And pa…

Sage? GoCardless? Coinbase? Etsy? A platform that pays out specifically for nsfw content (like pornhub)? Hatreon, as many have mentioned? If no available alternatives suit, and there is a big demand for something different, someone passionate should go build it and get rich! And if there isn't a big demand for it, so be it! Not everyone gets to have a liveable salary from writing furry fanfic porn, c'est la vie. The…

The problem is taking payment. The credit card companies don't allow most of this content and have been known to pressure payment processors to drop specific clients, with the threat of shutting down the entire company.

Visa/Mastercard have a de facto monopoly on online payments, and if they block you from taking payment online then you are out of luck.

I've known multiple people who have run adult websites or even tried to launch the adult-specific KS-clone suggested and taking payment is the constant issue.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#212

Post by Mz »

taohansen wrote: post #210
Mz wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That amounts to wildly misconstruing my comment.

i disagree. you’re welcome to explain how your statement does not amount to keeping men hooked on porn so they don’t rape (because that’s the alternative).

No one is required to be hooked on porn. But if you look at the big picture, more porn results in less rape, sexual assault and even child sex abuse. It does come with the downside that some people get hooked on it.

I am wholly supportive of helping people break their porn addiction. I am not supportive of trying to get rid of all porn everywhere as the means to protect a few people from themselves.

You are horribly miscontruing my remarks. Doubling down like this makes it look intentional.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#213

Post by urahara »

Mz wrote: post #188
daxorid wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porn is extraordinarily destructive. To say that it has no moral downsides is incredible: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/

I am totally and completely cool with male porn addiction as an alternative to rape: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201601/ev... Lesser evil and all that.

It's very close to saying something like rape is fine as it prevents killing. Both are kinds if crimes (no matter what the legal status of porn is, it destroys lives of actors and promotes harmful stereotypes and actions towards women too often, which makes it very close to a crime).

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#214

Post by Mz »

urahara wrote: post #213
Mz wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am totally and completely cool with male porn addiction as an alternative to rape: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201601/ev... Lesser evil and all that.

It's very close to saying something like rape is fine as it prevents killing. Both are kinds if crimes (no matter what the legal status of porn is, it destroys lives of actors and promotes harmful stereotypes and actions towards women too often, which makes it very close to a crime).

No, it is much closer to saying "If you can't meet the strict standard of celibacy outside of marriage historically required by the Catholic church, at least use a condom. It is a lesser sin."

(From what I gather, the church historically kind of looked the other way on condom use of young men seeing ladies of the evening as a practical matter. It was not "approved," but it was vastly better than spreading disease and multiplying the number of illegitimate children in the world.)

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#215

Post by gwern »

token_throwaway wrote: post #168

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…

> 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.

I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that you are not a creator on Patreon...

Patreon kicking people off is a serious issue because Patreon works so much better than all of the competition, from Flattr to Gratipay to Paypal to Bitcoin. As it happens, I'm a creator on Patreon myself (https://www.patreon.com/gwern), at ~$600 a month. I wouldn't go homeless or anything if I was kicked off Patreon (thanks, Bitcoin), but it would hurt me a lot. When I started using Patreon in July 2015, it immediately roughly quadrupled my monthly earnings from donations as compared to anything I'd ever gotten from Flattr, Gratipay, Paypal, Google AdSense, or Amazon Affiliates, Bitcoin either with or without Coinbase (and much more than that comparing to May/June but that's a little unfair since they tended to be spiky). That is, incidentally, despite Patreon having net fees of 2-5x what the others do. And the total amount has since tripled.

I hardly even advertised it! (Heck, I hardly even advertise it now or provide any rewards or anything.) Now that is a network effect.

Could people have given me money other ways? Sure. Heck, some of my readers invented or worked at the payment methods in question, and were fully capable of it. And they did, a little. And yet, I finally get around to signing up for Patreon and boom. There were people who were willing to give me substantial amounts of money... but only via Patreon. They were set up for Patreon, and that made donating easy and convenient for them, and this makes all the difference in the world. One website, one account, one payment.

Saying Patreon has no real network effects or can easily be replicated or that being kicked off of it would be trivial is the strict contemporary equivalent of the HN discussion of Dropbox where everyone writes it off because 'you can simply rsync your files to your personal server'. It sounds reasonable; and yet it is profoundly wrong in every way that matters to real people.

Is being kicked off Patreon going to hurt those creators? Oh yes. Quite aside from the porn-specific issues with the alternatives, just leaving Patreon is costly - they'll be lucky if they can scratch together even half what they were getting before. Call that 'other ways' if you wish, but I say it's spinach and I say to hell with it.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#216

Post by taohansen »

Mz wrote: post #212
taohansen wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i disagree. you’re welcome to explain how your statement does not amount to keeping men hooked on porn so they don’t rape (because that’s the alternative).

No one is required to be hooked on porn. But if you look at the big picture, more porn results in less rape, sexual assault and even child sex abuse. It does come with the downside that some people get hooked on it. I am wholly supportive of helping people break their porn addiction. I am not supportive of trying to get rid of all porn everywhere as the means to protect a few people from themselves. You are horribly…

that is your opinion. why would i purposely misconstrue your comment?

i wish your answer now had been your original answer. i urge you not to assume malicious intent (that would be malicious) and consider that your original comment might have been saved from scrutiny given expansion.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#217

Post by Mz »

taohansen wrote: post #216
Mz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is required to be hooked on porn. But if you look at the big picture, more porn results in less rape, sexual assault and even child sex abuse. It does come with the downside that some people get hooked on it. I am wholly supportive of helping people break their porn addiction. I am not supportive of trying to get rid of all porn everywhere as the means to protect a few people from themselves. You are horribly…

that is your opinion. why would i purposely misconstrue your comment? i wish your answer now had been your original answer. i urge you not to assume malicious intent (that would be malicious) and consider that your original comment might have been saved from scrutiny given expansion.

I am not assuming malicious intent.

But you continue to use tactics that look openly hostile, not like an attempt to communicate in good faith.

Also, all of the rebuttals here seem to assume that the people who wind up addicted to porn are innocent victims, wholly unrelated to the people who would otherwise commit sex crimes. I see no reason to make such an assumption. I also see no reason to believe that life as a person with a porn addiction is vastly worse than life as a person who can't constrain themselves from committing sex crimes. I have reason to believe doing things like that comes with much more personal downside, even if you posit that they don't feel guilty about it.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#218

Post by lawnchair_larry »

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…

Nope, you just made that up. Go to any of the well known sites and they all seem to have credit card signup pages

Also, I don't see what that has to do with Patreon.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#219

Post by freshhawk »

noobermin wrote: post #193
freshhawk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go to the site and have a look at "Featured Creators": Stormfront, Daily Stormer and Richard Spencer will be recognizable to anyone these days. Most of the rest (like Andrew Auernheimer aka Weev) are recognizable to the more online of us. Should make the name and the trollish nature of the name make more sense to know that. It isn't not serious. It was invite only at the beginning, marketed as the place for the alt-r…

"Free Speech" has become in the current vernacular as merely being right wing hate speech.

I'm convinced that is partly a tactic like the milk and OK sign stuff. Partly serious and based on a real disagreement about hate speech, partly laughing at embracing something and watching everyone else decide that now they have to absolutely denounce it.

Then they do something like organize a campaign of complaints against leftist and vocal anti-alt-right Prof. Ciccariello-Maher at Drexel for his speech, get him put on leave, and laugh at the centrist and leftist rubes falling over themselves in confusion.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#220

Post by kuschku »

Torgo wrote: post #162
kuschku wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The German economy is a multi-trillion dollar economy.

And yet, one payment processor (Europay) was simply bought by MasterCard, and the other (Girocard) can't compete anymore, because they can't influence what standards are used by Android Pay, Apple Pay, and NFC terminals (Hint: it's not the EMV standards themselves, but only specifically the large credit card networks)

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