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Personally I am a fan of this only because Kickstarter is a PBC. The most fundamental problem with Patreon is that it is a proprietary web service operated by a

by zanny 9y ago

Personally I am a fan of this only because Kickstarter is a PBC. The most fundamental problem with Patreon is that it is a proprietary web service operated by a for profit company that now controls the incomes of thousands, ranging from hobbyist artists to major productions like Crash Course. It is like everything that is wrong with Facebook (the lock in from networking effects to a closed ecosystem) but made even worse by making peoples livelihoods depend on it. If there has ever been anything more deserving of if not full decentralization some protection from the controlling interest destroying people on a whim it is Patreon. The PBC nature of Kickstarter doesn't wholly solve this, not even close, but it implies they at least cannot do unethical things to try to increase revenue on the platform by exploiting its dependent creators. Thats a small step in the right direction.

jacobkg 9y ago
PBC = "Public Benefit Corporation" https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-now-a-benefit-corporation https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-now-a-benefi...
jonathanjaeger 9y ago
A definite benefit is that you can port subscribers (as you mentioned, not closed): "The other big difference is that Drip also aims to be more creator friendly, allowing creators to easily port subscribers to other crowdfunding platforms with this model."
Hoasi 9y ago
Good point, thanks for mentioning it. I always thought Patreon was actually a Public Benefit Corporation.
quadrangle 9y ago
To be clear: A PBC just means they have some value that they will not sacrifice for profit. It doesn't mean they aren't for profit, and it doesn't mean they are democratic or anything. It's still a good thing. Not being a PBC is basically unethical always (there's NO ethical excuse for ANY for-profit to NOT be a PBC). But it's a low standard, not comparable to being a co-op or non-profit. Also, even with Patreon being not a PBC, it's horrendous to compare them to Facebook. Facebook is an evil corporation that spends tons of resources promoting surveillance, advertising, and manipulation (and gaining power to dramatically influence politics etc). Facebook is exploitive and actively malicious. For all the real complaints about Patreon, they are doing stuff that is largely positive at least and is in direct opposition to the surveillance-capitalism of Facebook. There is NO COMPARISON. Facebook is plainly awful. Patreon is a good concept run by good people with some real problems that make it worth looking at the competition.
- zanny 9y ago
  Facebook only turned into such a hostile entity because it got big enough to exert real political influence. I'm not a fan of putting the future of content creation into the hands of the founders or eventual investors when Patreon inevitably goes public because they are just as likely to turn just as evil as Facebook if you gave them the same colossal war chest Facebook has, and Patreon has a much more reliable revenue stream to fund such endeavors - their whole platform is about transferring money and they just take a cut. By comparison Twitter could easily have turned out as hostile to personal privacy as Facebook if they had won the advertising lottery that Facebook did to become so valuable. In general you simply don't get ethical corporations. They have no reason to be, and ethics hurts profits and produces vectors for competition to capture your market through predatory behavior. That is why I said I only like this because of the PBC - it is barely better than Patreon, but it is better than Patreon, and we don't have a viable freedom respecting alternative yet and going forward its going to just get harder and harder if Patreon is allowed to amass network effects the way it has in the last few years.
  - quadrangle 9y ago
    > Facebook only turned into such a hostile entity because it got big enough to exert real political influence. This evaluation is very shallow. Facebook has been a manipulative and unethical corporation for years, maybe forever. It's true that lots of companies start out fine and then start abusing their power once they get big. But Facebook is that and is unethical in other ways also. By design, Facebook is about collecting deep personal info, capturing attention and then selling your attention to the highest bidder. The very design of Patreon is in opposition to this. Even if Patreon were the most unethical abuser of their power, they would then be the worst in the basically ethical market of funding creative work directly. And Patreon isn't abusing their power dramatically right now and may never get there. Facebook is already being the worst in a fundamentally unethical market based on getting attention and selling it to advertisers. Your points about corporations and ethics are broadly true. But that doesn't mean that there aren't better and worse. We should be skeptical of all for-profit entities, especially VC-backed and stock-based ones. But they aren't all equal. Some are worse than others and some are by-design worse. It's basically impossible for Patreon to turn into something as horrendous as Facebook. Patreon could get pretty bad and that would still be true.
dogma1138 9y ago
Is there an actual difference in the US? The right of action in a PBC isn’t different than any other corporation. And considering that Kickstarter is a fund raising platform it puts its defined purpose in quite a murky zone to begin with.

by zanny 9y ago

jacobkg 9y ago

PBC = "Public Benefit Corporation" https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-now-a-benefit-corporation https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-now-a-benefi...

jonathanjaeger 9y ago

A definite benefit is that you can port subscribers (as you mentioned, not closed): "The other big difference is that Drip also aims to be more creator friendly, allowing creators to easily port subscribers to other crowdfunding platforms with this model."

Hoasi 9y ago

Good point, thanks for mentioning it. I always thought Patreon was actually a Public Benefit Corporation.

quadrangle 9y ago

To be clear: A PBC just means they have some value that they will not sacrifice for profit. It doesn't mean they aren't for profit, and it doesn't mean they are democratic or anything. It's still a good thing. Not being a PBC is basically unethical always (there's NO ethical excuse for ANY for-profit to NOT be a PBC). But it's a low standard, not comparable to being a co-op or non-profit. Also, even with Patreon being not a PBC, it's horrendous to compare them to Facebook. Facebook is an evil corporation that spends tons of resources promoting surveillance, advertising, and manipulation (and gaining power to dramatically influence politics etc). Facebook is exploitive and actively malicious. For all the real complaints about Patreon, they are doing stuff that is largely positive at least and is in direct opposition to the surveillance-capitalism of Facebook. There is NO COMPARISON. Facebook is plainly awful. Patreon is a good concept run by good people with some real problems that make it worth looking at the competition.

zanny 9y ago
Facebook only turned into such a hostile entity because it got big enough to exert real political influence. I'm not a fan of putting the future of content creation into the hands of the founders or eventual investors when Patreon inevitably goes public because they are just as likely to turn just as evil as Facebook if you gave them the same colossal war chest Facebook has, and Patreon has a much more reliable revenue stream to fund such endeavors - their whole platform is about transferring money and they just take a cut. By comparison Twitter could easily have turned out as hostile to personal privacy as Facebook if they had won the advertising lottery that Facebook did to become so valuable. In general you simply don't get ethical corporations. They have no reason to be, and ethics hurts profits and produces vectors for competition to capture your market through predatory behavior. That is why I said I only like this because of the PBC - it is barely better than Patreon, but it is better than Patreon, and we don't have a viable freedom respecting alternative yet and going forward its going to just get harder and harder if Patreon is allowed to amass network effects the way it has in the last few years.
- quadrangle 9y ago
  > Facebook only turned into such a hostile entity because it got big enough to exert real political influence. This evaluation is very shallow. Facebook has been a manipulative and unethical corporation for years, maybe forever. It's true that lots of companies start out fine and then start abusing their power once they get big. But Facebook is that and is unethical in other ways also. By design, Facebook is about collecting deep personal info, capturing attention and then selling your attention to the highest bidder. The very design of Patreon is in opposition to this. Even if Patreon were the most unethical abuser of their power, they would then be the worst in the basically ethical market of funding creative work directly. And Patreon isn't abusing their power dramatically right now and may never get there. Facebook is already being the worst in a fundamentally unethical market based on getting attention and selling it to advertisers. Your points about corporations and ethics are broadly true. But that doesn't mean that there aren't better and worse. We should be skeptical of all for-profit entities, especially VC-backed and stock-based ones. But they aren't all equal. Some are worse than others and some are by-design worse. It's basically impossible for Patreon to turn into something as horrendous as Facebook. Patreon could get pretty bad and that would still be true.

dogma1138 9y ago

Is there an actual difference in the US? The right of action in a PBC isn’t different than any other corporation. And considering that Kickstarter is a fund raising platform it puts its defined purpose in quite a murky zone to begin with.