Comment by nicolas_t | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nicolas_t | Hacker News Reader

I've always been surprised by how bad patreon's website is after so many years. The UX sucks and has barely evolved. I use them a lot to sponsor artists I like but that's because I have no real other choice, I'm amazed at how terrible the platform is.

Just as my own list of pet peeves:

- Comment UI is really terrible

- There's no great display of the different kind of medias. For example, I like to give money to some web novel writers, the way chapters are displayed in the Patreon mobile app makes it hard to read. I like to give money to webcomics, images are displayed too small for it to be comfortable when reading.

- It would seem obvious for them to have a video hosting option instead of forcing their users to host outside of Patreon.

- For a long time the mobile app didn't have a full feed of all creators in a single timeline which is utterly stupid.

And this is as someone who is not a creator on that platform. Creators I've talked to have been much more scathing.

I support a couple people on it, because... I want to support those people and their content. If they chose another platform, I'd follow them there. The idea of patreon was interesting at first, but... listening to about 20 seconds of Jack talk about why they hired this new product person, to put together all the new stuff they've dreamed about, etc... I just have to wonder - WTF did this take years to get to this point? This just feels like some weird desperation.

Yes, the UI experience has been terrible for years. I've heard a number of creators talk about how the platform doesn't give them the tools they need. A seemingly 'easy' one on a podcast I follow is the ability for the host to give a free month of access to a guest so the guest can engage with the existing members in the comment section. The comment UI is, itself, pretty bad, imo, but that's a another story. I initially assumed the host maybe just missed out how to do it, but after poking around... it just seems like it's not possible to do what he needs.

I'd considered using patreon for myself, and still might but they've not seemed to take any interest in moving the platform forward for years. This messaging just seems desperate, and I don't have much faith they'll actually be able to make things markedly improved. Happy to be wrong though.

This has amazed me too. Even the iOS app, until very recently, for years, had no "news feed" for all creators in one timeline like the website had. You had to click each creator individually. They finally fixed it but like..? it's the #1 obvious feature.

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