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Show HN: PinePage– A monetization platform rooted in the value of Free Speech

12 points by pinepage 5y ago

pinepage 5y ago
Salutations HN, I am Martin, the founder of PinePage. Our team has been working on creating a Patreon alternative that celebrates differences and controversy. We want to be a part of crafting a world where people can create without fear of exclusion. We take pride in being a Free Speech friendly platform - see our Free Speech Manifesto v1.0 (pinepage.com) and uphold a Zero Ban Policy. On PinePage users can create a free website in seconds, engage with their audience through a forum or blog, accept donations, or design membership tiers, all on their own domain. We welcome all types of content, no matter the genre; Political, Religious, Adult, Explicit…no content category is off limits as long as it doesn’t effectively break the laws of the jurisdiction under which our platform operates. It’s clear the consequences of censorship are far more dangerous than those of allowing everyone to freely state their beliefs. The past has shown us, time and time again, the effects of silencing the visionaries. Those in power decide what gets written in the history books, and everyone else’s views get crushed under the weight of censorship. We might be legally obligated to hide content in direct violation of the law, but your account would not be suspended, nor would you face an overall platform expulsion and demonetization. Feedback from the HN crowd is often super harsh but beneficial, thus we’d love to hear your feedback about https://pinepage.com https://pinepage.com either here on HN or directly to me martin@mail.pinepage.com Thanks!
- john-doe 5y ago
  > no content category is off limits as long as it doesn’t effectively break the laws of the jurisdiction under which our platform operate You should then indicate clearly in the About page in which country your company, or servers, are located?
  - pinepage 5y ago
    Great point! Most of our hosting happens in Germany, but our official company registration is in Estonia, presently indicated in the Contact Us page on our website.
    - stevenicr 5y ago
      I'm trying to remember why we've always been told to not do hosting in Germany (adult sites) - something about laws there that are anti-free speech and they have to respond to requests .. something.. it's been a while. I would look towards having servers in several countries and germany would not be one of them. I'd get off cloudflare too - but you are going to need a dns that can take DDos attacks, as well as attacks of the woke mob warriors - so they are going to try to get your registrar to take you out too, your hosting, your hosting country / govs.. their def gonna get stripe to kick you quickly. they are going to hack you, and try to release a DB with customer's doxx plus the donaters.. they will prob try to get visa/ms to ban you and maybe the us gov's int block list, whatever that stuff is called. with all that being said - there is a need for this and lots of people will use it if the fees are less than the other options. I've been kicking ideas similar around for a while now - I can see this being used in many forms. If you are pre-prepped for the mobs of haters, I'd like to see this succeed. not sure if pornhub got a new processor that does the visa/mc - if so I'd chat with them. crypto is sadly the main need here. I'd split the system up into like 5 different companies - running different jurisdictions - this will help deflect some of the hate and hopefully keep any one fail from taking the whole system down - this is just what I see as the future sadly.
      - john-doe 5y ago
        Germany is pretty strict with copyrighted content in general (don't even think about torrenting a movie there). They even comply with DMCA takedown requests.
      - pinepage 5y ago
        Hey Steven thanks for your comments. Germany is quite interesting. There is some restrictions and we are aware of them, but at the same time Germany also gives a tonnes of protection. We hedge our bets by making it easy to switch servers to any other place. Cloudflare is only used for landing page and admin of pages. The pages are hosted on our own servers. About hacking, it has always been this way and no matter what business security should be of high importance. They can and probably will ban our Stripe account. That's why every creator will have to connect their own payment providers. This means they could shut down payments to us, but not all creators. A lot of other services uses one payment provider for all transactions, but this makes them vulnerable as their whole business can get shutdown if they don't do exactly what the payment provider says. Crypto fixes a lot of this. We opened a can of worms, and it will be tough, but I doubt we are so much trouble as you expect. Rumble, BitChute, Odysee, Locals are all in the same sphere and they had troubles, but not as much as you'd expect. Thanks again for the comment Steve!
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
  Do you take a commission or is the subscription the full cost of using your platform?
  - pinepage 5y ago
    The cost of the monthly subscription is the full cost. All creators would be receiving their earnings directly from their subscribers to their own accounts. Not only that, at the moment we are scouting for suitable content creators who are willing to endorse our platform and use it entirely for free as well as earn a commission on the income we generate as a result of their active referral. Could you be one of them?
russdpale 5y ago
While the admiration to free speech is heartening, no one is asking you to be the purveyor of truth anymore then we ask that of the maitre d' at the restaurant. All we want is a decent experience, and free for all "speech" is not that, just like we don't want the table next to us expressing their hateful rhetoric at full volume. What are you doing to prevent this site from becoming like others that have tried to dethrone patreon, only to find themselves besieged with racists, misogynists, holocaust deniers, nazi's, flat earthers, qanon nutjobs, 3%ers, proud boy losers, bigots and other obtuse miscreants that will inevitably find their way to your app? Because if the answer is a user based reporting system or falling back on the bounds of the "law", there is no way I could recommend this to anyone.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  > racists, misogynists, holocaust deniers, nazi's, flat earthers, qanon nutjobs, 3%ers, proud boy losers, bigots and other obtuse miscreants free speech includes opinions that are slightly more conservative than you. name-calling does not change that.
  - russdpale 5y ago
    What?
    - pure_simplicity 5y ago
      Most people have no clue what the proud boys even are. All they know is "proud boys bad, very bad", because that's the narrative the powers that be want to push. The whole point of a platform like PinePage is to prevent individuals' lives from being ruined by the ignorant masses riled up in socially engineered hysteria that are serving mob justice on behalf of powerful interests (cancel culture). Your comment proves the need for the existence of such a platform. Have a watch of this short history of the proud boys and tell me if an organisation like the proud boys merits being banned anywhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsNlteJQunc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsNlteJQunc It's also very curious how organisations like BLM or antifa never make it onto these lists of boogeymen that need to be censored, even though they've said and done plenty of despicable (even criminal) things. Ever wonder why? It's for the same reason that not a single piece of fake news about Trump has ever been censored, even though real news about Biden is being censored and called fake news (remember the Hunter Biden laptop?). It's because censorship only serves to consolidate and protect the power of the authoritarians who implement it. That is dangerous no matter which side does it.
Gollapalli 5y ago
This seems interesting Martin. Thanks for sharing! I do have to question your usage of stripe, not because I think stripe is bad, but because I know of numerous creators who have been banned from it. Might I suggest looking into possible direct deposit options?
- pinepage 5y ago
  Thank you! We are currently developing the PayPal integration and most importantly Crypto payments possibility that would entirely change the game.
  - Gollapalli 5y ago
    What’s your stack like, if you don’t mind me asking?
    - pinepage 5y ago
      Of course! We use Python/Flask for backend. Postgresql, Redis and Docker Compose. We use Amazon S3 for hosting images, but we have made it easy to switch in case there will be problems (as seen by Parler). Frontend we use a mix between Vuejs and Jinja2. And for hosting we run both on our own servers and on Netlify, but Netlify can easily be switched out as well in case of troubles.
globalfoodbook 5y ago
Hi there, Please feel free to check out this channel for assorted food recipes from all over the world https://m.youtube.com/channel/UClN1MbLOaWn5jiyWUrHaugA?sub_confirmation=1 https://m.youtube.com/channel/UClN1MbLOaWn5jiyWUrHaugA?sub_c...

12 points by pinepage 5y ago

Salutations HN, I am Martin, the founder of PinePage. Our team has been working on creating a Patreon alternative that celebrates differences and controversy. We want to be a part of crafting a world where people can create without fear of exclusion. We take pride in being a Free Speech friendly platform - see our Free Speech Manifesto v1.0 (pinepage.com) and uphold a Zero Ban Policy. On PinePage users can create a free website in seconds, engage with their audience through a forum or blog, accept donations, or design membership tiers, all on their own domain. We welcome all types of content, no matter the genre; Political, Religious, Adult, Explicit…no content category is off limits as long as it doesn’t effectively break the laws of the jurisdiction under which our platform operates. It’s clear the consequences of censorship are far more dangerous than those of allowing everyone to freely state their beliefs. The past has shown us, time and time again, the effects of silencing the visionaries. Those in power decide what gets written in the history books, and everyone else’s views get crushed under the weight of censorship. We might be legally obligated to hide content in direct violation of the law, but your account would not be suspended, nor would you face an overall platform expulsion and demonetization. Feedback from the HN crowd is often super harsh but beneficial, thus we’d love to hear your feedback about https://pinepage.com https://pinepage.com either here on HN or directly to me martin@mail.pinepage.com Thanks!

john-doe 5y ago
> no content category is off limits as long as it doesn’t effectively break the laws of the jurisdiction under which our platform operate You should then indicate clearly in the About page in which country your company, or servers, are located?
- pinepage 5y ago
  Great point! Most of our hosting happens in Germany, but our official company registration is in Estonia, presently indicated in the Contact Us page on our website.
  - stevenicr 5y ago
    I'm trying to remember why we've always been told to not do hosting in Germany (adult sites) - something about laws there that are anti-free speech and they have to respond to requests .. something.. it's been a while. I would look towards having servers in several countries and germany would not be one of them. I'd get off cloudflare too - but you are going to need a dns that can take DDos attacks, as well as attacks of the woke mob warriors - so they are going to try to get your registrar to take you out too, your hosting, your hosting country / govs.. their def gonna get stripe to kick you quickly. they are going to hack you, and try to release a DB with customer's doxx plus the donaters.. they will prob try to get visa/ms to ban you and maybe the us gov's int block list, whatever that stuff is called. with all that being said - there is a need for this and lots of people will use it if the fees are less than the other options. I've been kicking ideas similar around for a while now - I can see this being used in many forms. If you are pre-prepped for the mobs of haters, I'd like to see this succeed. not sure if pornhub got a new processor that does the visa/mc - if so I'd chat with them. crypto is sadly the main need here. I'd split the system up into like 5 different companies - running different jurisdictions - this will help deflect some of the hate and hopefully keep any one fail from taking the whole system down - this is just what I see as the future sadly.
    - john-doe 5y ago
      Germany is pretty strict with copyrighted content in general (don't even think about torrenting a movie there). They even comply with DMCA takedown requests.
    - pinepage 5y ago
      Hey Steven thanks for your comments. Germany is quite interesting. There is some restrictions and we are aware of them, but at the same time Germany also gives a tonnes of protection. We hedge our bets by making it easy to switch servers to any other place. Cloudflare is only used for landing page and admin of pages. The pages are hosted on our own servers. About hacking, it has always been this way and no matter what business security should be of high importance. They can and probably will ban our Stripe account. That's why every creator will have to connect their own payment providers. This means they could shut down payments to us, but not all creators. A lot of other services uses one payment provider for all transactions, but this makes them vulnerable as their whole business can get shutdown if they don't do exactly what the payment provider says. Crypto fixes a lot of this. We opened a can of worms, and it will be tough, but I doubt we are so much trouble as you expect. Rumble, BitChute, Odysee, Locals are all in the same sphere and they had troubles, but not as much as you'd expect. Thanks again for the comment Steve!
ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
Do you take a commission or is the subscription the full cost of using your platform?
- pinepage 5y ago
  The cost of the monthly subscription is the full cost. All creators would be receiving their earnings directly from their subscribers to their own accounts. Not only that, at the moment we are scouting for suitable content creators who are willing to endorse our platform and use it entirely for free as well as earn a commission on the income we generate as a result of their active referral. Could you be one of them?

russdpale 5y ago

While the admiration to free speech is heartening, no one is asking you to be the purveyor of truth anymore then we ask that of the maitre d' at the restaurant. All we want is a decent experience, and free for all "speech" is not that, just like we don't want the table next to us expressing their hateful rhetoric at full volume. What are you doing to prevent this site from becoming like others that have tried to dethrone patreon, only to find themselves besieged with racists, misogynists, holocaust deniers, nazi's, flat earthers, qanon nutjobs, 3%ers, proud boy losers, bigots and other obtuse miscreants that will inevitably find their way to your app? Because if the answer is a user based reporting system or falling back on the bounds of the "law", there is no way I could recommend this to anyone.

axiosgunnar 5y ago
> racists, misogynists, holocaust deniers, nazi's, flat earthers, qanon nutjobs, 3%ers, proud boy losers, bigots and other obtuse miscreants free speech includes opinions that are slightly more conservative than you. name-calling does not change that.
- russdpale 5y ago
  What?
  - pure_simplicity 5y ago
    Most people have no clue what the proud boys even are. All they know is "proud boys bad, very bad", because that's the narrative the powers that be want to push. The whole point of a platform like PinePage is to prevent individuals' lives from being ruined by the ignorant masses riled up in socially engineered hysteria that are serving mob justice on behalf of powerful interests (cancel culture). Your comment proves the need for the existence of such a platform. Have a watch of this short history of the proud boys and tell me if an organisation like the proud boys merits being banned anywhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsNlteJQunc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsNlteJQunc It's also very curious how organisations like BLM or antifa never make it onto these lists of boogeymen that need to be censored, even though they've said and done plenty of despicable (even criminal) things. Ever wonder why? It's for the same reason that not a single piece of fake news about Trump has ever been censored, even though real news about Biden is being censored and called fake news (remember the Hunter Biden laptop?). It's because censorship only serves to consolidate and protect the power of the authoritarians who implement it. That is dangerous no matter which side does it.

Gollapalli 5y ago

This seems interesting Martin. Thanks for sharing! I do have to question your usage of stripe, not because I think stripe is bad, but because I know of numerous creators who have been banned from it. Might I suggest looking into possible direct deposit options?

pinepage 5y ago
Thank you! We are currently developing the PayPal integration and most importantly Crypto payments possibility that would entirely change the game.
- Gollapalli 5y ago
  What’s your stack like, if you don’t mind me asking?
  - pinepage 5y ago
    Of course! We use Python/Flask for backend. Postgresql, Redis and Docker Compose. We use Amazon S3 for hosting images, but we have made it easy to switch in case there will be problems (as seen by Parler). Frontend we use a mix between Vuejs and Jinja2. And for hosting we run both on our own servers and on Netlify, but Netlify can easily be switched out as well in case of troubles.

globalfoodbook 5y ago

Hi there, Please feel free to check out this channel for assorted food recipes from all over the world https://m.youtube.com/channel/UClN1MbLOaWn5jiyWUrHaugA?sub_confirmation=1 https://m.youtube.com/channel/UClN1MbLOaWn5jiyWUrHaugA?sub_c...