Patreon Donation Charge Salt - Patreon Changes TOS; Lolcows Apoplectic

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I did a little bit of math for my own stuff for a bit of perspective on the costs depending on the pledge.
  • ($1) will see a nearly $.40 additional charge
  • ($5) will see a nearly $.50 additional charge
  • ($10) will see a nearly $.65 additional charge
  • ($20) will see a nearly $.95 additional charge
  • ($30) will see a nearly $1.25 additional charge
Whether or not that's REALLY a bit deal is up to the Patrons themselves. But to me, it's no different than a CRV tax on a soda. You're paying for a luxury good after all.

If people are abandoning ship because your shit isn't worth almost an extra dollar, then it's time to rethink your model.
 
Okay, I kind of see it now. So people who donate a $1 are going to be the tier that gets hurt the most due to fees. Meaning that you have to go to the next tier which is $5. Which, depending on the creator might not be worth much.

So the ones who are going to be hurt are shitty creators like Dobby, sjws, and maybe new upcoming artists?

It sucks somewhat, but in hindsight, the creators get more %of the money from the donation, the only downside is that they might have a smaller donation pool to get.
 
tehpope said:
Some people aren't super salty about it (Clint from LGR):

https://www.patreon.com/posts/annoying-patreon-15763777

So yeah, Patreon is planning to change the processing fee for pledges as they've laid out here:
https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005631963

Someone posted a better explanation of the actual details here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/patreon/co...start_charging_patrons_a_credit_card/dqvrb9d/

In my opinion, this is a boneheaded move that arguably hurts more than it helps. I would MUCH rather eat the fees myself than have you charged more. This especially bites if you're pledging a few bucks or less (which is the vast majority of my patrons.)

I know I'll be losing patrons over this, I've already lost a few dozen since this morning. And hey, I don't blame you, it's a bunch of junk.

That being said though, I've made it so that every single patron will see videos early, regardless of what you pledge. Even if you pledge under $1. So if you feel that lowering your pledge to compensate for the fees makes sense, then feel free. I'd rather have more people watching then have a few cents more on the dollar.

Thanks as always for the support!
-Clint
Click to expand...
Clint's a good guy. He actually appreciates his fans.
 
The big reason Patreon did this, near as I've been able to tell, was that Paypal (and Patreon's managing services) were not getting their cuts, and more specifically, it not getting these cuts due to mass small donations and circular donations.

What would happen is that most of the asshats who got a barrage of tiny donations would then, in turn, donate to other patreons in tiny amounts, directly from their own Patreon earnings. This resulted in, essentially, a system in which not only are Patreons getting artificially inflated to a hilarious degree (Nora's Patreon consists of about 99% such donations) but wherein they aren't paying anything on the transaction, allowing them, in essence, to bypass the normal sales taxes and similar flimflammery one would encounter if doing things like donating normally directly from their checking accounts.

There are four groups this change is hitting harder than anyone else:

1. The pitybux brigade (Nora, Boyd, SGG, etc). These are people whose borderline nonexistant patreon donations came almost entirely from tiny donors and they in turn used this to bolster the tugboats of other speds.

2. The professional victims unit (Quinn, Wu, etc). These people also circular donate to shore up their patreon earnings (something we know from Based Blue).

3. Legitimate money-laundering schemes. Apparently, this has become a thing with patreon the last few years and this would, according to some reports, make the practice much less profitable.

4. Tiny accounts still getting set up.

So of these four, roughly 75% are ones that Patreon has a vested fucking interest in cracking down on.
 
So I went to Google "Patreon Circular Donations" to see if there was any good tldr summary of what was going on, because it's a fairly new concept to me

@Null hot damn your SEO is on fire
 

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All these people bitching and moaning over not getting as much free money, but they'll never actually do anything about it. They won't incentivize new patrons, they won't try to get online income elsewhere, and they'll certainly never get an actual job.

They care too much about their precious hipster-welfare to actually think for a couple of seconds about how volatile their income really is. Same shit that's going on with youtube's "ad-pocalypse".

How long is it gonna take for these people to realize that trying to make money off online "content" is always gonna be a fucking dumb idea?
 
xxXDxx said:
So I went to Google "Patreon Circular Donations" to see if there was any good tldr summary of what was going on, because it's a fairly new concept to me

@Null hot damn your SEO is on fire
Click to expand...

I'll surmise it, because I only learned of it about 2 years ago myself, when Randi Harper brought it up. While the practice was first seen in action done by Anti-GG lolcows, it was soon noticed to be done by both Rat King clients and some Tumblr cows as well.

The process works like this: You have a Patreon user. This user attracts some pitybux. From there, this user will then donate a small amount of these pitybux to other Patreons, who, in turn, donate to them at the exact same amount.

To use Nora Reed as an example, she gets a generous donation from one user ($20), and Nora immediately uses $5 to throw $1 each at other Norasphere cows (Jake Alley, Mark Boyd, et al). These cows, desperate for extra prestige, hurl the exact same amount back. Nora makes $20, all her subsidiary cows make $1 each in turn, and only after this does Nora pay Patreon's cut (minus the amount she just donated). This means many Patreon users are paying less than their actual share at the end of the month, it means that they're also using this to shore up the values in one another's Patreon accounts, artifically inflating the numbers in the process.

Individually, these donations are small, but in bulk they seriously add up.
 
That almost appears like making 20$ into 25$ total in the system....inflationary digital counterfeiting.

Am I misreading this? Because if not, then thats fucking amazing. They were priniting money out of fucking nothing.
 
Transvaalan said:
That almost appears like making 20$ into 25$ total in the system....inflationary digital counterfeiting.

Am I misreading this? Because if not, then thats fucking amazing. They were priniting money out of fucking nothing.
Click to expand...

Basically, though it's not quite as bad as it seems at first, at least from my understanding.

After all the circular donating, Patreon still got its cut. For example, in the above 20$ example, Nora still is at 15$ at the end and not 20$ since the five are still held in reserve to donate to the circular donations. However, the troons who aren't the initiators of the chain are still making money off this little arrangement. In theory, this was offset by Patreon getting its cut from them, too, right?

Well, that's where the problem comes in. Under this old model, Patreon was only collecting off the $15 Nora has now, not the $20 she technically has earned in this route, and technically the $1 troons in the chain are only paying pennies on the dollar based on their own Patreon tugboat values, which are also being artificially pushed by circular donations.

But yeah, it's basically like that episode of Beavis and Butt-Head where they spend the entire episode selling candy to one another:

 
Jaimas said:
Basically, though it's not quite as bad as it seems at first, at least from my understanding.

After all the circular donating, Patreon still got its cut.
Click to expand...

Yes, absolutely. A circular donation, by definition, doesn't change any creator's net result. Every dollar that goes into the system ends up in some creator or other's Patreon account, even if it bounces around a few times first. All that circular donations really do is inflate the publicly visible "per month" number... because that number only counts dollars going into each account but not dollars going out.

As others have already pointed out, the reason for the change is demands from Paypal and other service providers. The hit that the circlejerks will take is incidental.
 
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When one accusation is made, all the others come with it like a roll of underhanded toilet paper.
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((((((Weinstein))))))
 
Wtf kind of name is Clarkisha? "I Write All Day" mostly puff pieces about non-existent racism, going by your tweet, it seems.
These niggas and their names, I swear.
Honestly, I'm all for Patreon's new fee system. The rat kings and e-beggars can get fucked.
 
It's like Patreon assumed patrons were actually interested in financially supporting creators instead of a public stage from which they can chuck change into a wishing well of ebeggers and whores. The fools!
 
Yes, because Patreon wants to tangle with multi-billion dollar juggernaut PayPal that is a bank but operates by no rules of a bank and is shady as shit and is know for fucking everyone over and not giving a shit. Nobody fucks with PayPal for this reason. They are extremely powerful, operate with little regulation and will pound your ass into the ground.

Patreon doesn't play ball? Paypal cuts it off. Will it hurt Paypal's profits? A bit, sure. Will it incapacitate them? Not at all. Patreon, on the other hand, will be nearly destroyed by that. They would do it to send a message and they've done it before. Paypal would likely convince other providers to follow suit and others might, you might have smaller ones stepping in. But the problem is Paypal is easy to use and multinational. Its like switching a bank for a lot of people, and people wouldn't do it otherwise.

So yes, whine and bitch and moan. Patreon did this because it has financial interests like keeping the company fucking alive. Not to mention these sort of places don't want to be the targets of money laundering investigations. If you can't afford to spend a dollar a month on something when the price goes up by less than 50 cents, you probably shouldn't be spending it in the first place.
 
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