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Comment by NicoJuicy | Hacker News Reader

Since Facebook fan subscriptions recently released. Another multinational corporation tries to claim 30% on the shoulders of developers/content creators/...

I would rather see a "true" non-profit appear and claim this space. I also trust European non-profits more than American ones.

The platform (Liberapay) lives on donations, supports different currencies, multiple languages, has multiple integrations ( Github, Gitlab, Youtube, ..) and doesn't take a commission.

Which is the first time i see something like this.

Note:

No affliation with Liberapay, it was mentioned in another topic and i found it newsworthy ( Facebook fan subscriptions on the frontpage ... )

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Well, Liberapay is for donations only, hence it is not a true alternative to Patreon and such. Also, you still have to pay the processing fees which, they say, should be below 5% on average.

Nonetheless, it is pretty well-made and needed, especially since they care about internationalization.

> not a true alternative to Patreon

Translation: Not a paywall service.

Patreon is largely that function for people. The ability to just get donations existed long before. A tool to combine donations with access to exclusive stuff is the main focus of Patreon.

Personally, I see paywall-service as unfortunate because paywalls shouldn't exist. We need to find solutions (like patronage not tied to paywalls) to fund creative works that aren't restricted or freemium or whatever.

It seems to be working for The Guardian.

I think if something's valuable enough, someone will be willing to cover the cost, irrespective of whether it's also freely available.

The freerider-dilemma is a real thing. Even when it works in some cases (Wikipedia has large enough audience to get by on donations even when the percentage that donates is tiny), those are the exception.

Hence the efforts to build better coordination models (such as https://snowdrift.coop is doing).

> because paywalls shouldn't exist

Why not?

Because in principle, all the same amount of resources could fund the same work and yet a far greater audience could get that much greater value without paywalls.

Paywalls are a compromise that dramatically reduces the overall benefit a work has in order to get over the freerider problem that public goods face.

Basically: the PAY part isn't the problem, the WALL part is.

When you say “in principle,” what you mean is “ignoring all of the reasons people spend money.”

I mean that it's not an absolutely set necessary conclusion that stuff can't get funded equally well without paywalls. It might require different cultural norms, different ways to organize people or many other solutions, but IN PRINCIPLE the resources are available and could be available without paywalls.

And other than securing funding, there's nothing else positive about paywalls (although I'll admit there's potential arguments around ideas like people appreciating things more when they have to pay for them — things that still don't anywhere near outweigh all the negatives that paywalls have)

I don't see any reason why Liberapay couldn't deploy a recurring donation system like Patreon's.

They don't allow donations on content publication like patreon does, because it can be seen as a purchase.

They only allow reccuring donations.

It's their choice to not compete with Patreon. See FAQ: https://en.liberapay.com/about/faq

"What are the differences between Liberapay and other recurrent crowdfunding platforms like Patreon?

1. Liberapay is only for donations, meaning that transactions must not be linked to a contract nor a promise of recompense."

They do. It's in the title of the article.

What do you mean?? Liberapay supports solely recurring donations.

The question is not the money, the question is freedom of speech. A platform taking a commission is no big deal compared to the fact that it is allowed to determine what opinions are allowed and what aren't.

The platform has to determine what it's funding, because it's dependent on (a) local law (b) payment processors (c) the goodwill of the rest of its customers.

Nobody's going to help someone fund their child-porn-to-Iran scheme, and nor should they.

Unless you call it something cool, like "Tor".

Tor is a security tool that might be used for evil purposes.

It's not a gun, Tor is not developed so that pedophiles can share child porn.

And guns aren't developed for murders. But that isn't the point I was trying to glibly make.

People contribute to lots of well-intentioned took that contribute some kind of indirectly to evil things.

I'm not sure I understand. The commission is a really big deal for people financially dependants on recurring donations.

Unfortunately, as long as they're relying on Stripe and PayPal there are 1imitations to what is and isn't allowed: there are plenty of things that US payment processors make hard to deal with.

Not trying to dispute your point, but out of curiosity: Is that actually true?

> Donations to [...] can be paid using: a credit or debit card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express), a Euro bank account (SEPA Direct Debit), or a PayPal account.

Could I send money through my regular European bank without using Stripe to pay on Liberapay? Does anyone know how they've implemented that?

Huh, weird.

On the creator side, they say:

> We currently support processing payments through Stripe and PayPal.

From that point of view, they could potentially get stuck paying creators operating in what Visa/MasterCard/etc. consider high-risk categories.

SEPA is option of Stripe.

However, Stripe is still a US payment processor, and will be subject to the same legal concerns as other US payment processors (such as those raised by FOSTA-SESTA for anyone involved in any sex work). While you might avoid Visa/MasterCard's rules that come from such a legislative environment, you won't avoid Stripe's.

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