Patreon
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Patreon is a crowd-based, recurring funding site to support and pay content creators.
Criticism
Funding Change 2017
On 2017-12-07, Patreon proposed updating their fee structure so that site users would pay a transaction fee in addition to their pledge amount. This transaction fee consists of a 2.9% handling charge, together with a flat $0.35 service charge. While previously all transaction fees were 'silently' taken on the backend, so that (for users in the USA) a $1 pledge resulted in a charge of $1, the new structure meant a $1 pledge would cost this user (called a 'patron' in site nomenclature) $1.38. For European users the new structure would mean that a $1 pledge results in a charge of approximately $1.70, meaning that creators receive a mere 55% of the total payment at the $1 pledge level.
A further proposed change to the funding model was that while pre-December 2017 all of a patron's pledges were collected on the first of the month, the new structure meant that all payments would be collected on the monthly anniversary of the original pledge. This meant that (for example) if a user had pledged $1 to forty different creators, Patreon would collect $15 in service charges alone.
As a consequence, Patreon creators reported a significant number of their 'patrons' cancelling their pledges.
Following considerable outcry against these proposals, Patreon abandoned the proposed new fees structure on 2017-12-13. The site's CEO, Jack Conte, acknowledged the many criticisms, however the announcement of the reversal stated that "We still have to fix the problems that those changes addressed" while pledging to work with 'creators' to create a new funding model to do so.
- 2017-12-07 : We’re Updating Patreon’s Fee Structure. Here’s Why. (archived)
- Criticism 2017-12-07 : And Now: A Bummer
- 2017-12-07 : Metafilter DIcussion, providing many links.
- 2017-12-13 : We messed up. We’re sorry, and we’re not rolling out the fees change.
Its Going Down
On 2017-07-28, Patreon took down the account for It's Going Down (IGD), allegedly based on pressure from the Alt-Right. IGD was not given their money for the month of July or any way to contact/export their list of patrons.
- 2017-07-31 : Patreon Caves to Tim Pool and the Alt-Right, Bans IGD (archived)
Prohibits content **outside** of Patreon for it's creators
- : Because you are raising funds on Patreon, we may be held accountable for what you do with those funds, so we may also look at what you do with your membership off our platform. As a result when we talk about “On Patreon,” it means the creations you are funding on and through Patreon. When reviewing a page, we look at how creations are shared, where the page is linked to and where the traffic comes from. (archived)
See Also
- pledge
- payment
- Drip
- https://twitter.com/wombatoverlord/status/938849760198447104
- https://www.metafilter.com/171040/Patreon-to-shift-payment-processing-fees-from-creators-to-patrons
- https://theoutline.com/post/2571/no-one-makes-a-living-on-patreon
- Example of self-hosted funding.
- ...
- In which I finally stop using Patreon
- Patreon will now give creators cash advances on their subscription money
- https://twitter.com/bbq_bq/status/1238152877022957569
- "What the fuck is this shit??? #anime is basically all under age now #patreon? Do you not think for one moment that this is totally lacking any common business sense? If you don't want to do business with independent creators, just come out and say it." @bbq_bq March 12, 2020