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There must be serious network effects, if nobody has risen to eat their lunch. YouTuberLaw was working on a complaint to the FTC. There was allegedly some sort

There must be serious network effects, if nobody has risen to eat their lunch. YouTuberLaw was working on a complaint to the FTC. There was allegedly some sort of collusion against their competitor SubscribeStar during a recent controversy, where SubscribeStar suddenly lost their payment processing. During that event, people were trying to unsubscribe so they could delete their accounts, but Patreon was removing the pages with the unsubscribe control! (Looked like incompetence, not malice to me.) Based on what I've seen Jack Conte and other Patreon people say online, I don't think the officers of the company have very good control over what employees are actually doing. They actively contradict each other at times.

josteink 8y ago
> There was allegedly some sort of collusion against their competitor SubscribeStar during a recent controversy A “controversial” Patreon-account was banned over content not posted on Patreon. A Patreon-representative leaked in a tweet that this was done on the request of MasterCard and that there was nothing they could do. As a result he moved to SubscribeStar and asked his followers to move over (which seemed to work). Now this is where things get interesting... SubscribeStar uses PayPal for payment processing. A former paypaler moved to patreon. This person may have called some contacts/favors, because SubscribeStar suddenly found their entire PayPal account locked down and no longer received any payments from or for any accounts. Their business was effectively dead. It’s not a smoking gun, but certainly enough to cause warranted speculation. At best it’s PayPal not having good routines (and we know that already, right?), at worst it’s companies like MasterCard now policing what kind of internet-business or internet-content they will allow to be profitable, globally, unchallenged. Either way, the situation leaves a lot to be desired. Edit: This was actually discussed on HN until flagged (like too many interesting discussions). All I can find now is this link: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/08/patreon-and-mastercard-ban-robert-spencer-without-explanation https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/08/patreon-and-mastercard-ba...
- stcredzero 8y ago
  A “controversial” Patreon-account was banned over content not posted on Patreon. To be fair, he does try to be controversial, and he says some hair-raising things. Basically, imagine that you went into a den of literal neo-Nazis, and you were trying your best to say things to shock and insult them. I don't think that's very smart of him to do. Edit: This was actually discussed on HN until flagged (like too many interesting discussions). This does seem to be a pattern around here of late. There's a lot of pushing of narratives all across the Internet, which amount to "this person is [something horrible] don't even read their material." Much of that is false. At the same time there are genuine [something horrible] going around in much larger numbers in the past few years than the decades before. I think the real target is rational discourse itself.
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  Sorry but if you build a business like that and rely on PayPal that’s just not very smart at all. Any amount of research would immediately show that they can’t be trusted, they’ve pulled this trick so many times already.
  - Smithalicious 8y ago
    That's fair enough but who do you trust instead? I can't think of a single payment processor that I've not seen fuck people over for illegitimate reasons.
    - tinus_hn 8y ago
      Banks are subject to regulations and you don’t need to limit yourself to one.
- rmc 8y ago
  "PayPal suddenly froze all my money" has been a well known complaint for decades.
  - josteink 8y ago
    Sure. PayPal making arbitrary account shut downs is a known. But is it known that a competitor can kill your business with one short phone to PayPal without you having done anything to violate their TOS? That seems like it could be the issue here.

josteink 8y ago

> There was allegedly some sort of collusion against their competitor SubscribeStar during a recent controversy A “controversial” Patreon-account was banned over content not posted on Patreon. A Patreon-representative leaked in a tweet that this was done on the request of MasterCard and that there was nothing they could do. As a result he moved to SubscribeStar and asked his followers to move over (which seemed to work). Now this is where things get interesting... SubscribeStar uses PayPal for payment processing. A former paypaler moved to patreon. This person may have called some contacts/favors, because SubscribeStar suddenly found their entire PayPal account locked down and no longer received any payments from or for any accounts. Their business was effectively dead. It’s not a smoking gun, but certainly enough to cause warranted speculation. At best it’s PayPal not having good routines (and we know that already, right?), at worst it’s companies like MasterCard now policing what kind of internet-business or internet-content they will allow to be profitable, globally, unchallenged. Either way, the situation leaves a lot to be desired. Edit: This was actually discussed on HN until flagged (like too many interesting discussions). All I can find now is this link: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/08/patreon-and-mastercard-ban-robert-spencer-without-explanation https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/08/patreon-and-mastercard-ba...

stcredzero 8y ago
A “controversial” Patreon-account was banned over content not posted on Patreon. To be fair, he does try to be controversial, and he says some hair-raising things. Basically, imagine that you went into a den of literal neo-Nazis, and you were trying your best to say things to shock and insult them. I don't think that's very smart of him to do. Edit: This was actually discussed on HN until flagged (like too many interesting discussions). This does seem to be a pattern around here of late. There's a lot of pushing of narratives all across the Internet, which amount to "this person is [something horrible] don't even read their material." Much of that is false. At the same time there are genuine [something horrible] going around in much larger numbers in the past few years than the decades before. I think the real target is rational discourse itself.
tinus_hn 8y ago
Sorry but if you build a business like that and rely on PayPal that’s just not very smart at all. Any amount of research would immediately show that they can’t be trusted, they’ve pulled this trick so many times already.
- Smithalicious 8y ago
  That's fair enough but who do you trust instead? I can't think of a single payment processor that I've not seen fuck people over for illegitimate reasons.
  - tinus_hn 8y ago
    Banks are subject to regulations and you don’t need to limit yourself to one.
rmc 8y ago
"PayPal suddenly froze all my money" has been a well known complaint for decades.
- josteink 8y ago
  Sure. PayPal making arbitrary account shut downs is a known. But is it known that a competitor can kill your business with one short phone to PayPal without you having done anything to violate their TOS? That seems like it could be the issue here.