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Comment by SolaceQuantum | Hacker News Reader

The vast majority of Patreon's user base (the artists getting patronage) are not producing anything that would get booted off of Patreon for. In order to compete, bitPatreon and SubscribeStar will have to compete on attracting Patreon's artists off Patreon.

(FTR, I'm mildly certain that many artists on Patreon might even find the policing of the Patreon platform to be a positive, because it means their name isn't associated with the names of people they find reprehensible. I'm concerned that alternatives such as bitPatreon and SubscribeStar will quickly gain the reputation of being a platform for people whose beliefs are considered reprehensible elsewhere, which automatically makes it difficult to market those alternatives.)

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But some of those artists are rightly concerned that Patreon has that kind of power. I don't want the phone company to restrict who I can call, even if I never would call the "criminals" they block me from calling. There are others who are supporters of the banned topic even though their particular bit of art doesn't actually have anything to do with the banned topic.

I don't know how many will leave, but I don't like the idea of a company choosing morality and so I won't support anyone on patreon. If an artists wants my support they won't get it on Patreon (fair notice, so far I have not supported any artists in other ways - who knwos if this will change)

I'm not arguing for or against censorship in any particular manner. Merely that if SubscribeStar/bitPatreon want to compete with Patreon they will have to appeal to more than freedom of speech moral stance, since the majority of Patreon's artists are already either within Patreon's moral stance, benefit from the moral stance, or do not apply to this matter entirely.

I'm not sure the comparison to the phone company is very applicable. This would be the case if Patreon would be a pure payments proessor, like Mastercard or Visa (or maybe Stripe). But Patreon provides pages on their own website within their own brand identity for these creators, stores their digital media, promotes them through their search interface etc.

In my opinion, Patreon is more akin to a newspaper deciding which ads to show next to their articles or to a shopping mall deciding which shops to rent space to. And of course every newspaper will reject ads that would infuriate their readers (or journalists) and shopping malls will not rent to businesses that might damage their reputation (depending on how "upscale" it is this might be everything from soup kitchens over gambling outfits and payday lenders to brothels).

Now, you might disagree with them whether they have drawn the right line there and consequently take your business elsewhere (just as you might not want to visit a shopping mall with the wrong mix of shops), but I find it a bit of a stretch to frame this as a "free speech" issue.

> Patreon provides pages on their own website within their own brand identity for these creators, stores their digital media, promotes them through their search interface etc

Which is exactly the kind of useless functionality that they don't need. Most of the creators I've seen either migrate away from Patreon or diversify themselves end up using payment processing services like Stripe or Paypal.

> Which is exactly the kind of useless functionality that they don't need.

So says you, yet the vast majority of people I subscribe to on Patreon use it as a delivery platform for advance content to subscribers. One of the major ways it promotes higher donation amounts is by letting those people have gated access to content. How else would this be easily accomplished except for this "useless" functionality? A single password that is handed out? A large list of passwords that the artist needs to manage?

It quickly becomes obvious that this useless functionality has a very real use case, and I think it's in fact one of the drivers of high donation rates in some cases.

Interestingly, I've found this doesn't work equally well for all media. Digital artists, webcomic people, etc. can often use patreon as a way to give fans access to unsellable WIPs. Similarly, writers will use patreon as a way to display trunk stories (although in this case patreon is a draw through its network effects more than it is the genuine best place to do this).

How is it not comparable... When it comes down to money transfer, imagine if you are the one blacklisted by Visa and Mastercard... now you suddenly cannot make online payments, oops, you also can't even have a bank account at a major bank.

Things like this are in fact happening. From people who've used a bitcoin exchange connected to their Chase bank account to people that are a bit too right leaning for those at Patreon, regardless of where those opinions are expressed. While they allow similar language with a different bent on their actual platform.

When the gatekeepers of money start acting as censors, is that really not as bad or worse than the telephone company doing the same?

"Our service is where we make sure only good guys are, our competition is only used by literal child eating nazis"

No cartel in mankinds history has enjoyed this type of competitive advantage, good job SV :)

Just like voat cloning reddit. When the main draw is that you wont be censored it ends up drawing only the worst groups who have been censored or legitimately fear it. Pretty soon the clone is just a cesspool that the vast majority of users want nothing to do with.

This is why I think the Mastodon-like federated networks are better for these kinds of things. The majority of Mastodon users are Japanese because lolicon isn't permitted in Twitter, but you can still safely ignore those users because of Mastodon's federated nature.

You also ignore groups of users on reddit, just don't go to the subreddit.

Same thing for creators on Patreon.

> The vast majority of Patreon's user base (the artists getting patronage) are not producing anything that would get booted off of Patreon for.

Impossible to tell since it's decided on a case by case basis, not a set of hard rules that are simply equally applied.

edit: gotta love how this is instantly downvoted, but not challenged.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv7hvZee-PQ&t=8m07s

> bitPatreon and SubscribeStar will have to compete on attracting Patreon's artists off Patreon

They won't have to when Patreon actively tries to shove them away themselves.

See my other note about bitPatreon and SubscribeStar gaining the reputation as being platform explicitly for people with "reprehensible" viewpoints that Patreon is rejecting. If those platforms gain those reputations, it'll be very hard to compete with Patreon.

Another way to look at it is that Patreon is quickly becoming the platform of "fuck you, got mine" and "I didn't hear nobody getting silenced", joining the ranks of Twitter, Facebook, Google et al. 99 guilty people do not excuse one innocent person being just shrugged off unless you're prepared to get silenced in their place -- and serious artists with serious things to say about serious stuff don't do it. Mass appeal and money are one thing, in my heart of hearts I only care about the judgement of artists I respect. People want to knock themselves off my "artistic roll call" like that, they're absolutely welcome.

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