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Patreon Lays off 17% of Staff
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- thrillgore 4y agoIt seems like the claims that "there's plenty of work out there" are finally self-correcting. The worker continues to be spited.
- sprkwd 4y agoDoing this on Instagram seems… off. Can’t put my finger in it.
- chickenpotpie 4y agoAgreed. This and the recent controversy around the HyperSocial CEO posting an emotional layoff post on LinkedIn makes me wonder if the new trend in layoffs is to try to make us relate more with the CEO than the laid off employees and take some heat off them.
- indy 4y agoWait a little longer and they'll be announced on TikTok
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y agoBecause companies like Patreon come and go. They know it, we know it. So they grasp at straws for a fleeting moment of popularity.
- gobirds321 4y agoI think it was first posted on their blog here: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
- mike_d 4y agoAre we supposed to know who Jack is? Sounds like someone is in serious need of an ego check.
- zimpenfish 4y ago> Are we supposed to know who Jack is? I should imagine the people that blog post is relevant to know who he is, yes.
- egypturnash 4y agoPatreon's creator and CEO.
- Shebanator 4y agoAFAICT, he told the team separately, and is just using IG to announce publicly. I don't see how that is any worse than the usual dry press release.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwawaymaths 4y agoThis is legitimate feeling, maybe because not all your employees might have Instagram. We can't assume it wasn't also done on internal channels, though?
- unity1001 4y agoAsk the person who posted the Instagram post at HN instead of the Patreon's official blog's post.
- nonethewiser 4y agoIts because Instagram is for self promotion.
- jfasi 4y agoLooks like most of the layoffs are in marketing and sales, and that they're still hiring on engineering and product. Honestly, I'm surprised they had marketing and sales people to begin with. Those sorts of efforts pay off most with big-name, high-end artists who probably don't need monthly patrons to be successful. Focusing in improving the product seems like a smarter move, especially given how janky their product was until quite recently.
- bombcar 4y agoThese "user generated content companies" spend a lot of time and money marketing to the content creators (Patreon is defending against the built-in platform monetization of things like Youtube and Twitch, et al) and getting big name content creators on their platform (see some of the leaks related to Onlyfans, etc al).
- datalopers 4y agoThey laid off the entire security team last week
- CobrastanJorji 4y agoGlad to see they're really thinking long term. After getting rid of their security team, they should maybe rethink those pesky fire extinguishers that have done nothing but expire.
- rvz 4y agoAs an insult to injury this was announced on his Instagram. So professional! /s
- karaterobot 4y agoIt was announced on the Patreon blog, the poster chose to link to Instagram (annoyingly, for those of us not on Instagram). https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack I assume OP expected the blog post to be taken down or changed, so they captured it and linked to the capture instead of the original. I feel like the protocol for this should be to make a capture, post a link to it as a comment in the thread, and link to the original in the post.
- behnamoh 4y agoThe pandemic is over and so are most remote "jobs" that people started doing on Onlyfans, Patreon, etc. a couple years ago.
- bo0tzz 4y agoYour quoting suggests that you think what people on onlyfans and patreon do aren't "real jobs", but in fact to succeed in those spaces needs very hard work.
- acheron 4y agoDigging a big hole then filling it back in is "very hard work" too but that doesn't make it a real job.
- garmanarnar 4y agoConstruction companies would like a word with you.
- lovich 4y agoWhat, pray tell, qualifies a job as a "real" job?
- bombcar 4y agoI'd say something like people are actually willing to pay the average or even the worst job-doer something resembling a living wage. If the stats from things like Patreon are to believed (and filtering out the "dead weight" of creators who don't post or have given up without closing their account) there's a serious "top 1% of creators make XX% of the revenue" problem. Which means that for a small fraction, it's a job, for the vast majority it's a money-losing hobby.
- freeone3000 4y agoBy that definition, real jobs are doctor, dentist, and software developer. We don't pay the worst in most jobs anything more than the legal minimum.
- seibelj 4y agoI've heard rumors that Meta and Google have massive layoffs coming as well. Good luck out there
- subsubzero 4y agoI've heard the same, Meta for sure, and a few folks at Goog have told me as well they are coming. For google this will be the first time they have ever done layoffs in the company history(2009 had 200 folks leave so not really layoffs so to speak) so that tells you the scale of this tech downturn.
- seibelj 4y agoYou can't have your stock down 60% YoY (META) without consequence. There is a whole lot of fat at both of these companies (and really all large firms that never had any bad quarters) and a reckoning has to happen
- kevstev 4y agoYou absolutely can. Stock price is really meaningless as far as the day to day life of a company is concerned- if your cash flows haven't changed, and the market has just decided to shit on you for a bit for irrational reasons there are no consequences other than maybe looking into whether a buyback makes sense. Equity markets are often irrational and wrong. IE Covid- essentially every stock was down significantly in March of 2020, not realizing that some businesses will actually benefit from the pandemic. That said, your statement about fat at these companies is true, and its probably been long past time that they clean out some dead wood.
- oldgradstudent 4y ago> Stock price is really meaningless as far as the day to day life of a company is concerned Not when significant part of your employee compensation is equity-based.
- darth_avocado 4y agoWhat does “taking full responsibility” even mean? Like people lose their livelihood and you can get away with “I take full responsibility”. Taking full responsibility mean taking a pay cut or stepping down or basically taking consequences for yourself first before others have to.
- dougmwne 4y agoThat would be meaningless virtue signaling. Standard corporate speak.
- davezatch 4y agoWhat would non-“meaningless virtue signaling” look like to you? This seems quite decent as far as these things go.
- dougmwne 4y agoWell, seeing as how saying that means nothing, adds nothing, and says nothing, then not saying it at all would be more meaningful. The non-corporate speak translation would be “I tried my best to make this company bigger and more valuable, but it didn’t work. Some of you will now need to be sacrificed, but not me!”
- MerelyMortal 4y ago"I am responsible for overhiring/mismanaging, I'm sorry."
- cbozeman 4y agoThat's because you didn't come up in a time when people who fucked up like this would step down from their position for their clear and obviously failed leadership. You're not used to seeing what "full responsibility" actually is. Full responsibility is a samurai killing himself painfully while his best friend cuts off his head to end his suffering. That's full responsibility. This is, "I fucked up guys, here's 3-6 months pay and some benes... my bad. And yeah I know I fucked up last year too, but I took full responsibility then as well, so it's all good..."
- browningstreet 4y agoPatreon's handling of expired cards is terrible.. people I know who used Patreon just lose subscribers because the flow for fixing an expired card basically doesn't exist (or didn't, maybe it's been fixed since). Those people left Patreon and won't be returning. Their new engineering staff could fix that, for one.
- cronix 4y agoInteresting. I haven't had to enter new data for any subscription service when a cc expires for years now. Somehow the new info gets relayed to the service without my input.
- Sivart13 4y agoCertain credit card providers have a (paid?) service where companies like Patreon can poll for the updated details of any of the cards they have on file. My card didn't automatically update and I can confirm that the site gets weirdly broken.
- codegeek 4y agoA blog post was done other than Instagram: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack "but as the world began recovering from the pandemic and enduring a broader economic slowdown, that plan is no longer the right path forward for Patreon" So basically, they overhired to meet demands during Pandemic and now as less people are using the platform (??), there is no need for the 17% of people. Interesting.
- staticautomatic 4y agoIdeally, that’s how it would be described in the internal meeting version.
- Groxx 4y ago>In the US, teammates leaving Patreon will be given three months severance plus an additional two weeks for each half year of tenure beyond the first year. Pretty decent IMO. >You’ll also receive COBRA health care coverage through the end of the year. Odd that that doesn't match the pay period, but oh well.
- mandevil 4y agoI suspect its because of the way that COBRA works: COBRA would start for them on October 1st (their active employee insurance would cover them until Sep 30), so they are getting three months. I have never seen a health insurance that supported two week increments, so you couldn't do the 'two weeks for tenure' thing. You could, in theory offer an extra month per year beyond the first, but that's a lot of extra work and expense to go into, offering it, for something that I suspect will have very little pick-up. My guess is most everyone who is laid off today will have a job which will offer insurance by Jan 1st.
- ghaff 4y agoIn spite of what some developers seem to think job hunting can be a many month process, especially over the holidays and in an environment where many companies are being very cautious about hiring. So no I don’t expect most will have jobs by January.
- csmpltn 4y ago> "... I’m more confident than ever that the world needs a better economic system for creative people, and Patreon will keep building that system for creators over the decades ahead. However, the pandemic introduced volatility to the broader trend, starting with a rapid acceleration during COVID lockdowns. In response, we built an operating plan to support this outsized growth, but as the world began recovering from the pandemic and enduring a broader economic slowdown, that plan is no longer the right path forward for Patreon. I take full responsibility for choosing that original path forward, and for the changes today, which will be very difficult for our team." It's the same pattern at so many other companies now. Over-hiring during COVID (thinking what exactly? that people would forever stay locked up at home with nothing else to do with their money?), before waking up to the reality that things have gone back to normal and that there was never really a plan whatsoever for those hired. Asses were put in seats though, so there's that.
- Groxx 4y agoI wonder how much of it may just be "keeping up with competitors". You can lose a lot of ground in a year or two, and recovering that ground may be more costly than the additional hiring-and-firing cost.
- short_sells_poo 4y agoI agree with you in principle, but we now have the benefit of foresight. Imagine Patreon's position during early covid: they had a firehose of money pointed at them. I'm sure they knew it will end, but not "when". They had to react to it, if for no other reason than to prevent a competitor from getting ahead.
- dehrmann 4y ago> thinking what exactly? that people would forever stay locked up at home with nothing else to do with their money? I wonder if this was Bay Area tech elite bias. Between the Bay Area being late to reopen and generous remote working options, decision makers might have planned for growth that matched where SF in the pandemic, but hadn't realized that most of the country had already moved on.
- throwaway1777 4y agoFeel like the real story is a bunch of competitors are eating their lunch.
- gtfoutttt 4y agoWho are those competitors? The subject company is tho only one I know of like this. But I am not really active in the creative space so I'm ignorant.
- blisterpeanuts 4y agoYoutube and Facebook both offer monthly subscription plans for creators.
- mrtranscendence 4y agoWhich hardly anyone seems to use, at least for YouTube. I watch too much YouTube for my own good, and I can't remember the last time someone encouraged viewers to donate money on a recurring basis via any company except Patreon.
- mwidell 4y agoAnd the reason for this is likely that youtube takes at least 30% of the money, while patreon is around 5-8%
- kradeelav 4y agoSubscribestar, which I'm much more of a fan of since they have more common sense rules around NSFW art.
- voxl 4y agoCommon sense rules == completely banning all NSFW work? https://www.subscribestar.com/prohibited_content https://www.subscribestar.com/prohibited_content I'm all for having some SFW platforms, but let's not pretend that there isn't a dramatic, dramatic demand for NSFW content, and that banning it is nothing short of prudish.
- Lanz 4y agoIt'd be good to see Patreon face some more serious competition. They are by far the dominant force in their segment.
- phamilton4 4y agoNot being in the know, what are the serious competitors to Patreon? Utreon? Buy Me a Coffee? Youtube itself?
- api 4y agoApple and Spotify doing podcast subscriptions maybe?
- yamazakiwi 4y agoAs a new user of Patreon (literally this week is the first time I've used it) I finally signed up because a content creator is posting their videos to Patreon a day early. Youtube could solve that problem. Does anyone have any other examples of what Patreon does for them?
- bombcar 4y agoIt’s cross platform and PayPal hasn’t decided to eat it as a feature yet. That’s it.
- hobofan 4y agoOnlyFans
- nonethewiser 4y agohttps://coil.com/ https://coil.com/ for a "self-hosted" solution
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- BryanBeshore 4y agoFull post from Jack Conte's Instagram post: "Hi everyone - I have some sad news to share: today, Patreon is doing a layoff of about 80 employees, about 17% of our team. This was ultimately my decision, so I wanted you all to hear directly from me about the reasoning. Before I do, I want to say two things: first, today will be painful for many people, and I am deeply sorry to the incredible teammates who will be leaving Patreon - they are good, kind, creator-first, exceptionally talented, and smart people. And second, I remember how nerve-racking it was when I was a full time creator - before starting Patreon - to watch companies that I depended on go through moments like this. So for those of you who rely on Patreon for your business and communities: I want to assure you that the company is making this move precisely for that reason - so we can continue to be a rock for your business. As the world has recovered from COVID lockdowns and entered a broader economic slowdown, it has become clear that the original plan we built doe he year, to support outsized growth through the pandemic, is no longer the right plan for the company. I take full responsibility for choosing that original path forward, and for the resulting changes today, which will be so difficult for our team. It's important to me that we continue to deliver for our creators and patrons with new features and products like native video, new content creation and organization tools, a wold-class mobile experience, and new ways for creators to grow their membership and strengthen their communities. To ensure that we make progress on that roadmap, we are increasing our investment in product, engineering, and design, which means decreasing our spend on other ares of the company. Ad difficult as this is fo our team, I know this is the right thing to do for Patreon, because it ensures that the company maintains a position of strength, even through an economic downturn, while continuing to deliver for our creators. If you want to read more about this decision, I just published the internal note I sent to our team this morning, and it's linked in my bio. I'm going to stop posting here for a while to be 100% present internally for our teammates at the company. But I promise to come back in a bit - I will see you all soon. - Jack"
- Rekksu 4y ago> To ensure that we make progress on that roadmap, we are increasing our investment in product, engineering, and design, which means decreasing our spend on other ares of the company. Underrated dynamic in the startup layoffs this year. Many software companies grew headcount rapidly in areas outside of prod / eng in 2021 and are now scaling back those roles while preserving the talent that was extremely difficult to hire.
- magwa101 4y ago
- ArchOversight 4y agoThis is somewhat meta, but linking to an instagram post is terrible, I get immediately redirected to a login page and can't even see the content on Instagram. I do not have an instagram account, nor do I want to create one just to see this. Was there no better place to link to?
- vitiral 4y agohttps://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
- princevegeta89 4y agoLove it when companies and executives come with subtle titles like "A Note from XXXX", "A sad announcement", "Looking ahead into the future" etc. when they're nothing but just plain layoff notices.
- RoadieRoller 4y agohttps://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- micromacrofoot 4y agoNot only that, it's an image of text. It's incredible that this is still how we're sharing information online in 2022.
- ShamelessC 4y agoThis happens more and more when I visit Twitter now, too. _Really_ annoying and I have zero intention of creating an account on either of those sites.
- Akronymus 4y agoReddit also, if it is deemed sensitive.
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y agoThis bit from the employee announcement about how they're handling equity vesting [1] is worth highlighting as a pretty classy move, all things considered: > We’re waiving the one-year equity vesting cliff for all departing employees so that everyone has an opportunity to be a shareholder, regardless of your tenure. [...] All departing teammates will qualify for an extended option exercise period of 5 years, and we have extended it to 7 years in regions where we are legally able. It must be jarring to be on the receiving end of a layoff. In the grand scheme of things, a laid-off employee surely has bigger things to worry about... but I still think what they did here with the equity, especially the option exercise period, is a nice touch. Not many companies do this sort of thing, but they should. [1]: https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
- unity1001 4y agoThey say there's 3 months of pay, healthcare, mental care until the end of the year too. And they contracted a placement company to hook people up with new jobs.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoDecency demonstrated, and hopefully recognized at large regardless of the criticisms of the business strategy and execution.
- unity1001 4y agoI agree. Tech companies should never really break off with former employees. Any former employee is a future potential employee that you can re-recruit when the time comes. Also, talent is difficult to find. Which makes people the center. Whatever you build, you will build it with people. So you need people. Be them new employees, be them former employees.
- cafed00d 4y ago> Any former employee is a future potential employee that you can re-recruit when the time comes Not only that, all former employees are de-facto "background check references" / "evagenlists" / "detractors" of your company. Forever! (well, not exactly forever... but close enough) I can't recall a single year over the last 10 years where younger engineers, cousins, nephews or friends have asked me about the 2 companies I worked at before. And boy, have I been candid. Talked a very good friend of mine from joining Amazon for an offer he got making nearly 3 times much I did. All because of "decency" (or lack thereof) of a company.
- scelerat 4y agoThis seems to simply be how Patreon operates: yearly layoffs
- tomovo 4y agoTIL: Jack Conte is the keyboard player in Pomplamoose. Weird.
- an1sotropy 4y agohe was that before Patreon was a thing, and they're connected: https://www.inc.com/alexa-von-tobel/jack-conte-youtube-patreon-episode-54.html https://www.inc.com/alexa-von-tobel/jack-conte-youtube-patre...
- lxe 4y agoEvery SV company: 1. Start a company that does a thing well 2. Hire enough people to do the thing well 3. For some reason, hire more and more people to do more and more random things 4. Hire more managers who hire even more people 5. You are now a complicated mess and can't get anything done 6. Run out of money 7. Fire people and write a sad post. Continue to collect hefty CEO salary. Why not just stop at 2?
- unity1001 4y ago> Why not just stop at 2? Because your investors will never allow that. And without their money, you cant even reach #2.
- jesuspiece 4y agoI've wondered this as well. Look at Uber, how are they not profitable? How many more engineers/general personnel do they possibly need to hire?
- Ekaros 4y agoBecause taxi business isn't actually that great business. You have to employ lot of relatively expensive drivers and they have to pay for costs of complex machine... And the users want to get it as cheap as possible and complain somewhat if prices ever go up.
- squeaky-clean 4y agoLooking at their app they do a lot more than just give rides nowadays. UberEats delivers from restaurants, but also apparently groceries now? They have a short-distance package delivery option. Rental cars. And some kind of tool to book a plane and hotel for travel? I don't know if it's the right business call, but Uber is like 10 different companies now.
- rmah 4y agoBecause if you stop at #2... 1) you won't attract any follow-on investment capital; 2) your original investor will be angry that you're sitting on a pile of money that is doing nothing; 3) you will likely grow slower than your other competitors. in some markets, this is death, in other markets, this is fine. Patreon had nearly 500 staff before layoffs. Now has about 400 staff. You may have a hard time understanding what all those people do, but I suspect they're all quite busy.
- bilsbie 4y agoIt’s weird these companies grow this big. How many software engineers do you need to monthly bill a list of people and transfer it to a different list? That’s like a single person saas.
- noirbot 4y agoIf I had a nickle for every time someone on HN claims that a sizable company could be replaced by 1-5 devs, I'd have enough money to start a competitor to most of them that did it better with more devs/staff, as evidenced by the general lack of 1 person saas companies out there that solve more than a very niche problem.
- jrockway 4y agoWhat large company is beating the 5 person competitor in their industry?
- noirbot 4y agoMost of them? Can you give an example of a 5 person competitor competing with a large company? And of those, how many of them can only do that because they're outsourcing most of their needs to some other company people regularly complain is bloated?
- adam_arthur 4y agoStructural inflation is primarily driven by blue collar wages. Going to be a lot of white collar casualties on the way back to 2%, given that rising discount rates hits them first
- o_1 4y agoWhat's the growth from graphtreon vs these layoffs. Most top patreons have quadrupled or more monthly earnings from 2020. This could just be a netflix style "thanks for the hardwork, goodbye".
- ivraatiems 4y agoAs layoff announcements go, this one is pretty solid. Cuts immediately to the chase. No sugarcoating. Takes full responsibility. Offers pretty solid severance packages. I can only hope that if my organization has to lay people off, they'd be half as kind as some of the recent ones have been (and not at all like others, such as Klarna).
- PeterisP 4y agoI wonder if it's somehow related to some allegations floating around today (e.g. https://twitter.com/TizzyEnt/status/1569439160561442817 https://twitter.com/TizzyEnt/status/1569439160561442817 ) of Patreon dealing with part of the revenue coming from effectively selling risque pictures of minors.
- Havoc 4y agoWell, that seems pretty OK for a layoff mail. Bit confused by reducing staff spend while increasing spending on engineering & product. Surely for a software company those are roughly the same thing?
- abimaelmartell 4y agoDidn't they just fired their whole security team a few weeks ago?
- HankB99 4y agoApparently all 5 of them. https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/09/patreon-security-layoffs/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/09/patreon-security-layoffs/
- shtopointo 4y ago"I take full responsibility" - ok, what's the responsibility you take?
- remram 4y ago*I* take responsibility by having *you* be unemployed. It makes sense if you don't think about it.
- Invictus0 4y agoIt's a fine message and generous severance, but people need to wake up to the reality that companies don't really care about them when making plans for the future. Was it really so hard to predict a minor ~15% downturn after a period of lavish, extraordinary exuberance? Conservative, controlled, measured headcount growth is just not a consideration, as we've seen time and time again.
- rblatz 4y agoThe broader economy was basically saying here is free money, grow the business at all costs, worry about growth then later we'll worry about profit. Now due to inflation the Fed has ended the free money era, and business plans have to change. Expect a lot more of these posts over the next few months.
- lgleason 4y agoI have no love lost for that company, so while I feel bad for the workers, I would love to see the company as a whole go under and a better alternative emerge.
- skilled 4y agoInteresting... As comments have pointed out already, this might have to do with the fact that companies kept on hiring more people to deal with the influx of customers during the pandemic. I don't question it, but I most definitely question how many of these companies blindly hired these people without spending a second thinking about consequences of their actions. Shopify was recently in the news for the same reason[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32237574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32237574
- donatj 4y ago80 / .17 = 470 employees. How does Patreon need this many employees? It really doesn't seem like that much of an operation.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoI would guess >300 of those employees aren't working on the core product.
- LegitShady 4y agocreator support
- mherdeg 4y agoHmm -- how is Gumroad doing? Is their business affected by the same economic slowdown issues, or did they find another way forward?
- AngeloR 4y agoI think this is just the start for some bad things are patreon... This video of execs at Patreon apparently turning a blind eye to employees calling out patreon users that were selling images of underage children: https://twitter.com/TizzyEnt/status/1315626557688483841?s=20&t=EhjxhVWDd7zl4KVg32bssQ https://twitter.com/TizzyEnt/status/1315626557688483841?s=20... They also laid off their ENTIRE security team: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/09/patreon-security-layoffs/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/09/patreon-security-layoffs/
- verall 4y agoI don't think that's the right twitter link
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- adamhowell 4y agoI'm guessing this is the Twitter link you meant: https://twitter.com/TizzyEnt/status/1569439160561442817 https://twitter.com/TizzyEnt/status/1569439160561442817
- tptacek 4y agoIt's not actually that unusual to absorb security into engineering; if engineering is already doing most of software security, and engineering/ops is already handling IT security, then the rest of security might in fact be duplicative of stuff third parties can do just as well. I have no inside knowledge as to whether this was the case at Patreon; no opinions about Patreon whatsoever. But re-orging security into and out of engineering is not unprecedented.
- bink 4y agoYou're right that having security report to engineering is not unusual. It's also not a great idea due to conflicts of interest, but not unusual.
- phpisthebest 4y agoPatreon decline had 3 Phases 1. Censorship which caused a market reaction for more competition, and the first mass exit of the platform 2. Changes in the Fee Structure and billing policies, this caused the 2nd mass exit from the platform 3. Platforms getting better at internal monetization (i.e YT SuperChat and memberships) There has been little advancement of of the patreon platform, and with more and more competition from other direct compeitors (subscribestar, etc) and different monetization avenues (TeeSpring,etc) there is little reason for creators to use patreon outside of the network effect, and since they are not growing that effect is smaller every day
- drusepth 4y agoProbably a better link than whatever the Instagram post is (behind a login): https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack https://blog.patreon.com/a-note-from-jack
- MintDice 4y ago
- Aachen 4y agoRecently signed up for patreon but couldn't figure out a payment method. The only option available, paypal, would succeed and I'd be redirected back to the merchant (patreon) but then neither show up in my patreon account nor on the paypal side - and I'd rather avoid giving paypal a cut so this was already a last resort. Open source liberapay was a no brainer (for K9 and F-Droid iirc) but very few creators have a liberapay. Surely there's more going on than this, but the news doesn't surprise me with this amount of friction and very handful of payment methods available. It'll work for the 90% or they'd not be in business at all, but still.
- capableweb 4y agoMaybe that depends on your location? I can use card (debit/credit) and also PayPal. You don't see "add card" in the payment methods page?
- Aachen 4y agoFor that I'd need to first get a credit card. Most people here don't have one because you never need it here, but indeed for paying for american stuff I tried getting one. Happened to be after moving to Germany. Was denied, don't have a credit score (not here at least, and afaik the Netherlands doesn't have this system of random magic score calculations without actually being indebted) and neutral wasn't good enough. Like I said, paypal really was the last resort. I'd be happy for them to just draw from my IBAN directly (basically everyone in Europe has this, banks in Germany are required to give you one regardless of credit score because, indeed, it's essential for modern life) or to send them cash in the mail like mulvad or use the here-common iDeal system, or manually transfer it or...
- niek_pas 4y agoIt's not very clear from your comment where exactly you are, but in The Netherlands credit cards are quite common — almost everyone I know has one, and I was raised here.
- 4y ago
- remram 4y agoPatreon could have eaten OnlyFans' cake so easily, instead they seem to be struggling like everyone thought they would when they banned NSFW content in 2017. I don't understand why they thought that move would benefit them. I don't understand how Jack Conte is still CEO after such a stupid change or how he can say with a straight face that he's "taking responsibility".
- battery_glasses 4y agoI think its reasonable that a lot of creators don't want to distribute their work along side porn. Does Only Fans have any non-porn content? I really don't know because in my head Only Fans is a place for porn.
- throwaway675309 4y agoPatreon has a shit ton of NSFW stuff so I'm not sure if this decision was overturned or if it's just limited to actual live actor pornography.
- dc-programmer 4y agoMaybe I’m biased due to the content I subscribe to, but Patreon seems to be going for a more sophisticated aesthetic. This comes through even in the name. The word Patreon conjures images of the Medici’s and “elevated” art forms. I think if they started to cater to the NSFW side of things it would result in brand confusion for producers and consumers.
- egypturnash 4y agohttps://www.patreon.com/policy/guidelines https://www.patreon.com/policy/guidelines is the official rules. A summary: * mark horny stuff as 18+ * all horny posts must be patron-only * drawings are okay but no photos/video of actual people going at it * no bestiality, rape, kids, incest, necrophilia, or dubcon/noncon As a creator of horny art I do not look forwards to the day when Visa/Mastercard/Apple/Google/etc leans on Patreon and says "hey we banned all horny content, you can either ban it too or you can quit working with us".
- rexreed 4y agoI can tell you that many people I know are abandoning Patreon for their support of Russian patreons. This statement didn't help: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-patreon-continued-to-support-russian-creators-despite-us-sanctions-2022-3?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-patreon-continued-to-sup... And their response is not so great: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/4553920132877-Impact-of-international-sanctions-against-Russia https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/4553920132877-.... I'm sure the layoffs are not entirely related, but having this stance didn't help.
- kzrdude 4y agoTheir statement makes sense to me
- TaylorGood 4y agoOn twitter a couple days ago it was said they're laying off their whole data security team. https://twitter.com/wbm312/status/1567974063578185728?s=21&t=MjdkyYDCbym6UJ_sJJaPZg https://twitter.com/wbm312/status/1567974063578185728?s=21&t...
- pastor_bob 4y agoI guess undercutting Vimeo wasn't cheap
- bArray 4y ago> Last week, we let go of 5 teammates from our security organization, which stemmed from a different set of reasons from the ones guiding today’s decisions. The change last week was part of a longer-term strategy to continue distributing security responsibilities across our entire engineering team, bring new areas of expertise into Patreon internally, and continue partnering with external experts. Unfortunately, the change generated concern that we were reducing our security investment, but I wanted to make it clear, especially in light of today’s changes, that we are in fact increasing our investment in security. This is interesting, and I'm not entirely convinced. It seems as though their security team was not warned and you would expect a handover process. > The change last week was part of a longer-term strategy to continue distributing security responsibilities across our entire engineering team > Unfortunately, the change generated concern that we were reducing our security investment, but I wanted to make it clear, especially in light of today’s changes, that we are in fact increasing our investment in security. This doesn't sound like an increased investment, it sounds like a decreased investment. "Why are we paying these people when we can just get the normal engineers to do this?". Maybe this is possible, but who's going to allocate sprint time to work on background pentesting and documenting? You may say "we will get an external team to do this", but will they get access to source code? Will they get access to upcoming features?
- jeremymcanally 4y agoI have no idea how their team was composed previously, but it could be that they had a lot of folks who were analysts but weren't contributing much to remediating issues. It sounds like (and I have no idea again) that they're hiring a small number of security engineers (maybe even one) to not only actively look for security issues, but to also actively work to remediate them and improve code security posture as well. This function paired with a specialized external team to handle general SOC/network level security probably is a smarter investment for them right now. > You may say "we will get an external team to do this", but will they get access to source code? Will they get access to upcoming features? Most likely yes in my experience.
- bArray 4y ago> but it could be that they had a lot of folks who were analysts but weren't contributing much to remediating issues. Neither feature testers (does it behave as expected) or security testers (is it secure as it does it) are expected to write fixes. Writing fixes needs to be planned in the sprint and is better worked on by an expert on that system. > they're hiring a small number of security engineers (maybe even one) to not only actively look for security issues, but to also actively work to remediate them and improve code security posture as well. If this is true, it could seriously affect their ability to ensure the system remains secure. Sometimes a security issue will take a long time to hunt down, and perhaps require a large rewrite to deal with it. Whilst this person is dealing with this, they are no longer looking for new issues. I'm just not sold this is anything but a cost cutting exercise, and could (theoretically) lead to bad practices in the future.
- clcaev 4y agoI hope their Precor acquisition remains unscathed, perhaps they spin it off so it can continue to build excellent elipticals.
- _Adam 4y ago>So within the next 10 minutes, teammates who will be leaving the company will receive a calendar invitation to a video call with a leader in your function and a teammate from the People team. In that meeting, you’ll review the details of your separation and have an opportunity to ask any questions you may have. I would have sent the invite out beforehand to avoid the entire companying spending the next ten minutes in complete uncertainty about their futures.
- quickthrower2 4y ago> We are offering our nine Dublin engineering teammates relocation packages to join these US-based teams. Do they get a payrise to match US salaries?
- nazavo 4y agoI would argue this is a "soft redundancy" for non US-based teams. There would be salary adjustments for sure, but even that rarely makes a convincing argument to uproot your whole life and move countries.
- padraic7a 4y agoThat’s a long 10 mins to wait for an email to see if you’ve still got a job or not.
- ThinkBeat 4y agoI had no idea that Patron employed so many people. I keep getting surprised by that. Companies are employing a lot more people than I expected. Parts of it is down to pure ignorance and not understanding the complexity inherent in the domain, but a part of it also bloat. Is it a status thing to employe a lot of people? A hope of sustaining financial growth by increasing headcount?
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoI hope you all are starting to see the coming depression. Not recession, depression. I am way early on this, I get it.
- xenadu02 4y agoI subscribe to a single Patreon. It's an artist publishing an online comic. I pay for day-ahead access vs the public site. Reading the thing I pay for is fucking _painful_ on Patreon. So is trying to use their comment system to interact with the creator or other fans. Everything is slow-loading infinite scroll with tons of "load more" links. It is absolutely dreadful and every time I interact with the site I'm reminded that I really should cancel my subscription. The experience has not meaningfully changed in years. They can pay all the lip service they like but Patreon sucks at connecting creators to fans/subs. Their content presentation sucks. Their search sucks. Their comment system sucks. Whatever they are doing they aren't making the service more useful to the people forking over the money.
- odessacubbage 4y agomost of the sites that scrape patreon's content have better interfaces and loadtimes than patreon
- RheingoldRiver 4y agoAs a creator it sucks too. I manage a small patreon page for a Discord bot and every time I edit our page I have to relearn how to use the interface. Every time I want to make a post I forget how to...make a post? How in god's name is it possible to make an interface so bad that one has to remember how to make a post? It's completely unintuitive. This is not something that should be difficult lol. (The part I forget is adding alt text to images, although I think there might be other parts I forget too. I don't post that often, it's a small page for a side project.)
- stoicjumbotron 4y agoApart from Ko-fi is there any good alternative?
- cooleo 4y agoI know of Steady in Europe, am sure there are others, too. https://steadyhq.com/ https://steadyhq.com/
- the__alchemist 4y agoWas there a security breach? I've gotten several "Login attempted on your account; was this you?" emails 2 days ago. I didn't attempt to log in.
- pizzaknife 4y ago"Over the last 9 months, we’ve seen the tech industry – and the whole economy – change considerably." have we, though?
- uuidv4 4y agoDoes anyone know if they have freezed hiring in general? I'm literally in an interview loop process for senior engineer with them right now. Lmao.
- niek_pas 4y agoRun while you can!
- noobermin 4y agoThis is interesting, usually it isn't the marketing team that gets gutted first, a reverse of the norm.