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Patreon has a new look for its next era
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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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.
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.
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.
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 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.
They should set up a Patreon.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
The rise and fall of patreon
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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.