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Kickstarter launches Drip, a Patreon competitor

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Re: Kickstarter launches Drip, a Patreon competitor

#61

Post by quadrangle »

zanny wrote: post #36

Personally I am a fan of this only because Kickstarter is a PBC. The most fundamental problem with Patreon is that it is a proprietary web service operated by a for profit company that now controls the incomes of thousands, ranging from hobbyist artists to major productions like Crash Course. It is like everything that is wrong with Facebook (the lock in from networking effects to a closed ecosystem) but made even wo…

To be clear:

A PBC just means they have some value that they will not sacrifice for profit. It doesn't mean they aren't for profit, and it doesn't mean they are democratic or anything. It's still a good thing. Not being a PBC is basically unethical always (there's NO ethical excuse for ANY for-profit to NOT be a PBC). But it's a low standard, not comparable to being a co-op or non-profit.

Also, even with Patreon being not a PBC, it's horrendous to compare them to Facebook. Facebook is an evil corporation that spends tons of resources promoting surveillance, advertising, and manipulation (and gaining power to dramatically influence politics etc). Facebook is exploitive and actively malicious. For all the real complaints about Patreon, they are doing stuff that is largely positive at least and is in direct opposition to the surveillance-capitalism of Facebook. There is NO COMPARISON. Facebook is plainly awful. Patreon is a good concept run by good people with some real problems that make it worth looking at the competition.

Re: Kickstarter launches Drip, a Patreon competitor

#63

Post by dogma1138 »

zanny wrote: post #36

Personally I am a fan of this only because Kickstarter is a PBC. The most fundamental problem with Patreon is that it is a proprietary web service operated by a for profit company that now controls the incomes of thousands, ranging from hobbyist artists to major productions like Crash Course. It is like everything that is wrong with Facebook (the lock in from networking effects to a closed ecosystem) but made even wo…

Is there an actual difference in the US? The right of action in a PBC isn’t different than any other corporation.

And considering that Kickstarter is a fund raising platform it puts its defined purpose in quite a murky zone to begin with.

Re: Kickstarter launches Drip, a Patreon competitor

#64

Post by zanny »

quadrangle wrote: post #61
zanny wrote: post #36

Personally I am a fan of this only because Kickstarter is a PBC. The most fundamental problem with Patreon is that it is a proprietary web service operated by a for profit company that now controls the incomes of thousands, ranging from hobbyist artists to major productions like Crash Course. It is like everything that is wrong with Facebook (the lock in from networking effects to a closed ecosystem) but made even wo…

To be clear: A PBC just means they have some value that they will not sacrifice for profit. It doesn't mean they aren't for profit, and it doesn't mean they are democratic or anything. It's still a good thing. Not being a PBC is basically unethical always (there's NO ethical excuse for ANY for-profit to NOT be a PBC). But it's a low standard, not comparable to being a co-op or non-profit. Also, even with Patreon bein…

Facebook only turned into such a hostile entity because it got big enough to exert real political influence. I'm not a fan of putting the future of content creation into the hands of the founders or eventual investors when Patreon inevitably goes public because they are just as likely to turn just as evil as Facebook if you gave them the same colossal war chest Facebook has, and Patreon has a much more reliable revenue stream to fund such endeavors - their whole platform is about transferring money and they just take a cut. By comparison Twitter could easily have turned out as hostile to personal privacy as Facebook if they had won the advertising lottery that Facebook did to become so valuable.

In general you simply don't get ethical corporations. They have no reason to be, and ethics hurts profits and produces vectors for competition to capture your market through predatory behavior. That is why I said I only like this because of the PBC - it is barely better than Patreon, but it is better than Patreon, and we don't have a viable freedom respecting alternative yet and going forward its going to just get harder and harder if Patreon is allowed to amass network effects the way it has in the last few years.

Re: Kickstarter launches Drip, a Patreon competitor

#65

Post by thomnottom »

wmeredith wrote: post #3

I haven't read the article, but the branding absolutely sucks. When trying to generate income, Drip, is hardly the connotation I'd want. They should have gone with Flood or Tide. Something big and powerful MADE of Drips. I get what they were going for, but it seems like a tone deaf misfire. EDIT: And, as u/aronarduino pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the name is already taken (and the TLD drip.com) by a well est…

I haven't had a chance to go through the new marketing stuff, but the original terminology of drip referred to the actions of the creators - not the payments. Albums and tracks released by labels were called "drips", not what we paid for them.

And as I pointed out, drip.com was originally registered by this service. They moved off that domain a few years ago and it was eventually taken up by the current occupants.

Re: Kickstarter launches Drip, a Patreon competitor

#66

Post by jboggan »

smacktoward wrote: post #56
microcolonel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada, the drip is slang for Gonorrhea.

As it is in the U.S. Given that, the logo they chose is also somewhat... unfortunate.

Yes, my first thought was that Kickstarter needed to get to the doctor and make some awkward phone calls. Really, really unfortunate logo and name combination.

Re: Kickstarter launches Drip, a Patreon competitor

#67

Post by quadrangle »

zanny wrote: post #64
quadrangle wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear: A PBC just means they have some value that they will not sacrifice for profit. It doesn't mean they aren't for profit, and it doesn't mean they are democratic or anything. It's still a good thing. Not being a PBC is basically unethical always (there's NO ethical excuse for ANY for-profit to NOT be a PBC). But it's a low standard, not comparable to being a co-op or non-profit. Also, even with Patreon bein…

Facebook only turned into such a hostile entity because it got big enough to exert real political influence. I'm not a fan of putting the future of content creation into the hands of the founders or eventual investors when Patreon inevitably goes public because they are just as likely to turn just as evil as Facebook if you gave them the same colossal war chest Facebook has, and Patreon has a much more reliable reven…

> Facebook only turned into such a hostile entity because it got big enough to exert real political influence.

This evaluation is very shallow. Facebook has been a manipulative and unethical corporation for years, maybe forever. It's true that lots of companies start out fine and then start abusing their power once they get big. But Facebook is that and is unethical in other ways also.

By design, Facebook is about collecting deep personal info, capturing attention and then selling your attention to the highest bidder. The very design of Patreon is in opposition to this. Even if Patreon were the most unethical abuser of their power, they would then be the worst in the basically ethical market of funding creative work directly. And Patreon isn't abusing their power dramatically right now and may never get there.

Facebook is already being the worst in a fundamentally unethical market based on getting attention and selling it to advertisers.

Your points about corporations and ethics are broadly true. But that doesn't mean that there aren't better and worse. We should be skeptical of all for-profit entities, especially VC-backed and stock-based ones. But they aren't all equal. Some are worse than others and some are by-design worse.

It's basically impossible for Patreon to turn into something as horrendous as Facebook. Patreon could get pretty bad and that would still be true.

Re: Kickstarter launches Drip, a Patreon competitor

#68

Post by Cyberdog »

annapurna wrote: post #11

As the article mentions, there are many players in this area and time will tell how Kickstarter leverages their brand to succeed, especially as it is an invitation list only (for now). Some interesting thoughts from Perry Chen (Kickstarter Co-founder and Chairman): “If you look at a lot of companies, it’s COO, CMO, blah, blah, blah,” Chen said. “But look at a museum. You might have a CEO or director, but then you mig…

4. Moistener [$31/month]

5. Squirter [$63/month]

6. Gusher [$127/month]

Re: Kickstarter launches Drip, a Patreon competitor

#70

Post by seibelj »

olalonde wrote: post #50
seibelj wrote: post #16

My idea for paying for open source code would be to auto-scan your codebase, find all open source projects, let you set a donation amount ($5, $10, $100, $1000) per month, and it would auto-donate to every project. Then give you a nice tax writeoff summary for the non-profits. Obviously many details to work out, but I could see a company willing to pay $500 per month if it was easy to donate to all the tools and proj…

The problem with this approach is that trivial libraries (e.g. https://github.com/visionmedia/debug ) that are widely used would get a disproportionate amount of donations.

That would be part of the "details" that need to be worked out, to prevent this and other issues.
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