This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Everyone should watch this video: The rise and fall of patreon
Patreon is struggling financially (at least compared to the level of growth the VCs want to see), and is likely going to fully enshittify before long. It sucks because they provide a super valuable service for creatives.
On a related note... I went to cancel a membership a few weeks back, and the site displayed a message "you don't have an active membership to cancel". I thought it was strange, so I checked out the network requests being made, and turned out the cancel API call was getting blocked for "security reasons". Nothing else on the site was blocked for me, just the cancellation endpoint.
I opened a ticket, and it took them nearly 2 weeks to respond, and there was zero acknowledgement on why cancellation would be blocked.
Not sure if it's a purposeful dark pattern, but it sure seems like it!
Pretty sure that if it was purposeful, they'd get slapped with a massive fine sooner than later
Maybe, but it would also be very easy to blame on misconfiguration / mistake. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if the behavior itself isn't purposeful, but ignoring / not fixing it is. I've definitely seen such behavior at other companies, where they drag their feet on fixing a bug that is bad for the user, but helping them.
I'm guessing the intentionality could be uncovered with a couple well crafted subpoenas.
But yeah, def can see what you're describing happening
That sounds like a block being made in your browser (maybe a browser security feature overreacted) and not something Patreon did wrong.
It was a server-side block, from Cloudflare (security rule specifically). I'm very familiar with it, having used the same service over a decade. They are able to tweak the overall security level, or specific WAF rules for the endpoint in Cloudflare. They also have analytics that will show them exactly how many cancellation requests would be blocked. The fact that they totally ignored these details in my ticket, is concerning.
Luckily there's Ko-Fi, which I use. Not quite as robust as Patreon but it's nice if you need a quick donation link.
Ko-Fi is much harder for creators to be anonymous in, however.
Patreon is one of the few companies I really like right now. They are helping creators get out from under the boot of every other damn online platform.
I mean there's a lot of substitutes right? I feel like every YouTube video I watch there is a plug for their patron, kofi, buy me a coffee, podia. Hopefully they can compete to be not awful in the long run.
Personally I hope Nebula takes off. I signed up for a perpetual account recently and it's great, but a bit limited in terms of the selection of creators.
I pay for nebula mostly to support Legal Eagle right now.
Notjustbikes turned me onto it, but legaleagle is another good one on there. I wish more creators would look into it. I'm a big fan of Kyle Hill, and his content seems to be exactly the sort that would fit there, but he isn't on it.
Those two, Lindsey Ellis and Philosophy Tube are the only four that I found good. It's kind of thin still.
a plug for their patron, kofi, buy me a coffee
I've got links to several of them on my youtube channel. Patreon is the only one my viewers have ever chosen to use.
Regardless of the issues people identify with Patreon, it is the one that pays the bills consistently.
They should set up a Patreon.
I remember this article from last year, when they laid off 80 people, or 17% of their workforce https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/patreon-layoffs-cuts-creator-partnerships-team-1235372211/
My reaction to this is still - how the hell did they need close to 500 people?
This kind of service should be a very thin layer between the creator and the viewers, there is no need for any additional crap that a middleman company tries to provide. Plenty of other services can do the same for much cheaper.
Was a great video. Thanks. Enshitification seems to be the trend in so many companies right now that I wonder how long it can all be sustained.
They aren't the only one providing this kind of service.
Patreon won't be missed.
They are the simplest service that effectively hides a creator's personal information, though.
Oof, I hope they didn’t pay their designers too much for that amorphous blob logo.
It really doesn't look good. It's too basic to be recognizable and too weird to be interesting. I had to wonder if this is a teardrop or a bean at first, turns out it's neither. The backdrops they have for it look almost AI generated too. Not sure what they were thinking with this one.
The platform is literally filled with amazing artists, and that blob is the logo they go with.
They should have never changed their logo at all. The first one was the best:
That new logo is... yeesh.
It’s a skull
I can see how creators who are solely on Patreon will benefit from the additional features, but I'm curious about how widely they'll be adopted by those who post on multiple platforms. If you have a YouTube channel and use Patreon for members-only content, for example, using the Patreon chat feature would exclude the non-member portion of your community from those conversations. While this is a good alternative for those who specifically want member-only chat areas, I don't see it replacing tools like Discord any time soon.
Also, having the member profiles on by default definitely made me pause when I got the email a few weeks ago. I know some people will enjoy that feature, but I personally went in and immediately turned it off.
Since they tried to charge everyone extra card payment fees I have assumed their leadership were idiots....
I get why they are doing some of this, not sure how useful it will be. Couldn't you already have free content? Not sure that's actually new.
And wow, that has got to be the most unrecognisable logo ever. They are going to have fun trademarking that....
Feels like they're planning to sell jellybeans
I welcome the resurrection of 3D logos, flat logos look nice but start to bore me. This blob, however, is just weird and not really unique in the sense that I would mentally link it to the platform.
Can we get a "the sopranos" look how they massacred my boy?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Many Patreon creators aren’t just posting exclusive content on the platform; they’re also uploading to YouTube, chatting with fans directly on Discord, and promoting themselves on TikTok.
Conte is emphatic that Patreon doesn’t want to replace all of that — but the platform is no longer simply a way for artists, podcasters, and writers to paywall their work.
Soon, Patreon creators will get access to free membership tiers, allowing fans to follow their work without signing up for a paid subscription.
“There’s some [fan discussion] that’s happening on Twitter, but those spaces aren’t built for this,” Julian Gutman, CPO at Patreon, told The Verge.
In the future, member profiles could contain more detailed information about individuals, including what tier a user subscribes to, items they’ve purchased, and what other creators they support, according to the updated privacy policy.
In August, multiple simultaneous issues with Patreon payment processing meant that some creators were unable to access their money, and fans were seeing their subscriptions being canceled.
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