Patreon lays off 13% of workforce • Hacker News Board

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#231

Post by scott_s » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #210

scott_s wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then pay to support a creator on patreon and consume their content elsewhere. (I don’t think this is ideal, but your summation made it sound like a false dichotomy.)

I'm up for it, I support no (or very short) copyright, but let's be honest here - that's way more friction for end-users.

For what I support and consume, it's actually less. Personally, I'm happy just using Patreon as a way to pay the creators and consume their content elsewhere.

Some of the people I support make videos, and while they release them early on Patreon itself, they always eventually make it to YouTube. No matter what investment Patreon makes, it will never be as good as YouTube for watching videos. I could watch these videos early on Patreon, but I don't. Not because Patreon's video watching is bad (although it is), but because YouTube is the best platform for watching these kinds of videos. The same thing applies to podcasts (but with different apps, of course).

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#232

Post by rechristened » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #173

tomp wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy has proven to be the best competition for shitty legacy content delivery methods. I wonder if we'd have Netflix without ThePirateBay. Fact is, people want to pay for content (not because it's "not cheating" or whatever, but because they genuinely want to support artists and want them to keep creating) but are unwilling to jump through hoops for that. It's on Patreon & co to improve their game.

Netflix's UI is total shit. It is as if they are purposefully trying to keep it that way to hide the fact that most of the movies they have are garbage and the only way to get people to watch those is to give them some odd "compatibility" with your taste rating.

Netflix's UX is better than any other their competitors.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#233

Post by vorpalhex » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

subpixel wrote: post #189

Applejinx wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've ever tried to monetize NSFW content in a context that involves credit cards, you know it is an absolute nightmare. If Onlyfans is seriously NSFW, it may have no problems accepting credit cards but its days are numbered and it runs the risk of the credit card processors unilaterally refusing to service them anymore (especially Visa, IIRC) Patreon is at the scale where they would be exceedingly aware of this.…

By your logic, all NSFW online businesses online are vulnerable to their payment processing being taken away from them. Can this possibly be true?

Payment processors view this as a risk/reward scenario. NSFW content historically has very high chargeback rates. When your overall processing amount is low, the risk is low. As the amount goes up and your business gets more successful, the risk increases as your new customers are more likely to be fickle.

This is a few years out of date but when I investigated what it would take to legally accept credit cards for NSFW content, the processors all wanted a very large bond to hold as protection against chargebacks. I imagine once your daily transaction volume grossly exceeds reasonable bond levels, the processors get pretty flighty.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#234

Post by vorpalhex » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

lalaland1125 wrote: post #215

fareesh wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also banned Carl Benjamin, leading to a mass exodus. They justified this by citing his use of a racial slur in a YouTube video, although the word was not used in the context of a racial slur. In the USA there is some kind of Voldemort status given to this word where you cannot even use it out of context - it reminds me of that Jehovah sketch in Monty Python where that parody has now manifested itself into a real…

For context, here is a censored version of the transcript that caused Carl Benjamin to get banned: "I just can’t be bothered with people who chose to treat me like this. It’s really annoying. Like, I — . You’re acting like a bunch of n-----s, just so you know. You act like white n-----s. Exactly how you describe black people acting is the impression I get dealing with the Alt Right. I’m really, I’m just not in the mo…

Patreon and other platforms that engage in this kind of moral policing are always going to have an issue in that they must continually get more strict. As a platform, you can't easily defend to your profit source picking an arbitrary line between one offensive behavior (racism) and another (eugenics). At first that seems fine - nobody is going to defend racism or eugenics.

But remember that Patreon has a diverse user base and some of those users will be very offended by things that don't offend you or I such as drinking, same sex relationships or transgender rights. If Patreon (as a profit seeking entity) sees financial risk, it's always going to engage in the most aggressive enforcement of any potentially profit affecting content. This is happening with Youtube now with the crackdown on firearms content, legitimate coronavirus talk and swaths of political content on both sides of the aisle.

At some point we need a way to have platforms that allow any legal content, even when that content is really reprehensible. I don't know if that solution is legal or just an incentive problem, but the mainstream-ification of all internet content at some point needs to be halted before free speech is genuinely quite harmed.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#235

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

nolok wrote: post #223

dannyw wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their UX for viewing creations is absolutely atrocious. If you're going to write a site like a JavaScript SPA, at least do it well. Scrolling down the stream of a large creator brings down my i7 Macbook Pro to its knees. That should not be happening at all. Finally, Patreon's 'no refund whatsoever' policy is acceptable for donation jars, but with the growth of creators offering $100-$250+ tiers, it is only going to h…

The word you're looking for regarding PayPal is trust. Buyers trust PayPal, with good reasons. And in a sad way, PayPal didn't have to offer much for that, merely ensure that you got what you paid for or your money back. It says a lot about the universe of web sites, sellers and payment processors that offering that put them well above every one else.

The problem is that the payment processor has no capacity to really investigate fraud, so their main choice is between defaulting to enabling seller fraud or buyer fraud. This means it makes sense to use different payment processors with different defaults for different payment types, because some payment types have disproportionately more buyer fraud than seller fraud.

The problem for Patreon is that they're trying to provide something useful -- a service for transactions which are more likely to be dominated by buyer fraud -- but are stuck building it on top of credit card infrastructure that the law requires to default to defending against seller fraud. Then they get stuck in the middle, because buyers can still commit fraud by purchasing thousands of dollars worth of material and then disputing the charge with their credit card company after they already have it.

What's needed is a version of credit cards that themselves do what Patreon is trying to do (no chargebacks) with relatively low monthly charge limits (limiting the buyer's exposure to card theft risk), so that this use case can be met with a system that isn't a garbage fire.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#236

Post by ric2b » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

_-0-_ wrote: post #194

hef19898 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which sounds like an opportunity, doesn't it? Fraud free adult patreon.

But how would you go about implementing insurances for the fraud-free part?

Just use crypto-currency and you don't need to worry about any chargebacks.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#237

Post by Kye » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

Hoasi wrote: post #171

Nextgrid wrote: post #9

I don't really understand why Patreon needs so many employees. We're talking about almost 300 people to just supervise a fully automated process. The tech has already been built almost a decade ago and hasn't changed much, so it can't require that much engineering work. It's also an easy problem (take X amount of money, divide it between Y people, pay them out) and they ironed out any potential issues over the years.…

> I don't really understand why Patreon needs so many employees. Good question, I am curious about how it compares with how Gumroad operates.

Gumroad's open board meetings might give some insight into this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_DfN-mKCGNuswqERc6sI...

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#238

Post by freeone3000 » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #234

lalaland1125 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, here is a censored version of the transcript that caused Carl Benjamin to get banned: "I just can’t be bothered with people who chose to treat me like this. It’s really annoying. Like, I — . You’re acting like a bunch of n-----s, just so you know. You act like white n-----s. Exactly how you describe black people acting is the impression I get dealing with the Alt Right. I’m really, I’m just not in the mo…

Patreon and other platforms that engage in this kind of moral policing are always going to have an issue in that they must continually get more strict. As a platform, you can't easily defend to your profit source picking an arbitrary line between one offensive behavior (racism) and another (eugenics). At first that seems fine - nobody is going to defend racism or eugenics. But remember that Patreon has a diverse user…

Any platform that wants to can host all legal content. Nobody's preventing them, as an outside force - people are complaining, but the complaints have no force, other than people don't want to be there. Platforms with explicitly free-speech agendas (see: 4chan, voat, gab.ai, hatreon) have reputations as absolute cesspools of hatred and bigotry, and people who don't want to deal with that choose on their own not to go there.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#239

Post by mikorym » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #217

mikorym wrote: post #191

I think there should be a music service that works exactly like Spotify / Apple Music / Google Music but with these differences: 1. No free tier 2. Your views determine which artists get your money. AFAIK all of the above mentioned services pool views and give your money to the artists with the most overall views. If I listen exclusively to Scatman John's Scatman's World then I would have expected his estate to get a…

The harder question is does everyone get paid the same per view. If i only listen to one song, does that artist get the $5 from my monthly subscription? If I view a 1000 things in a month, do they all get $0.005? It gets hard to put a value on a listen. Is it maybe $0.10? Well over an hour that is $2 and I can get audio cheaper elsewhere. I think you have to have tiers where each month you get X credits (partial roll…

You take x seconds listened that month, and distribute to artists a, b and c.

As a nice easter egg, I mean distributivity in the mathematical sense. y.x = y.(seconds(a) + seconds(b) + seconds(c)) = y.seconds(a) + y.seconds(b) + y.seconds(c). And y = subscription amount per month / total seconds.

The alternative is of course to take x amount of songs listened to, but this does not distribute over minutes.

I guess you can have a hybrid approach too. If the song is >10 minutes it counts as two songs, or maybe you have a continuous scale. All of the above is better for me than what Spotify does. Even better, let the paying customer decide.

But I agree that finding new artists is tricky. You can pay people to listen to your music in the hope that they later go back to listen to that music when you aren't paying them anymore.

Re: Patreon lays off 13% of workforce

#240

Post by mikorym » Wed, Apr 22, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

anandoza wrote: post #214

mikorym wrote: post #191

I think there should be a music service that works exactly like Spotify / Apple Music / Google Music but with these differences: 1. No free tier 2. Your views determine which artists get your money. AFAIK all of the above mentioned services pool views and give your money to the artists with the most overall views. If I listen exclusively to Scatman John's Scatman's World then I would have expected his estate to get a…

What's the difference? Maybe I misunderstood but isn't pooling the views and then giving money weighted by views the same thing?

I actually had to explain this to people that listen to my music. I get ~$0 per month from Spotify and when I told this to one of my friends (who listens to my music) they were like: "But I pay $10 a month!".

Then I had to explain that all the subscribers on the whole platform get pooled together.