Patreon News Gets Worse, User's Payout FROZEN Without Notice
Patreon News Keeps Getting Worse, User's Money FROZEN for 'suspicious activity"Following news about a user having his account suspended "in secret" a story in the New York Times emerged with statements from Jack Conte and their head of Trust and Safety. The statements seem to be directly antagonistic toward the community, specifically Sword and Scale, Dave Rubin, Me, and Sargon of Akkad.They imply that Sargon broke the rules on their platform and Conte implies many of us are simply trying to generate support for a cause of some sort.But all this is only made worse by the original story of a man who had his patreon account suspended without notice. He only found out because patreon had not paid him in about a month.
Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When Twitter, Facebook, or Google do something wrong, who do you call?
Is there a customer service number you can get in touch with to try and solve these problems?
There isn't, because there are just too many users on the platform, and often, these errors, these mistakes, these mistreatments go unnoticed because the individual doesn't have the ability to generate an outcry and get any attention.
But this can't be excused in the issue of Patreon.
Patreon is now entering the territory where they're becoming so big, they're neglecting their users.
But we're not talking about trying to post a funny picture of a cat or send words to another person.
We're talking about people's access to resources.
Their money.
The thing they need to survive in the long term.
If Twitter doesn't respond to you over some issues, yeah, well, get over it.
I mean, it kinda sucks, but for the most part, you'll be fine.
When Patreon stops sending you money and you don't know why, now you're in trouble.
And this is bad news for Patreon, and it's bad news for the rest of us.
In what may be the worst possible timing ever, a story has emerged about a hacker and researcher who got suspended from Patreon without notice.
And he only realized it when he noticed money wasn't being sent to him anymore.
Patreon was allowing people to still sign up.
But they weren't giving him his money, and they never told him.
Look, if Patreon needs to suspend someone's account, in this instance it was over suspicious activity, I understand that.
But it's becoming a problem when they don't notify the users.
And I will also admit that, you know, trust and safety team members calling creators to talk to them is a really good thing.
Jack Conte was willing to DM me about these issues, and I can appreciate that.
But they're entering the space Where they're no longer dealing with the creators.
To make matters worse, in a story from the New York Times yesterday, there's a comment from Jacqueline Hart, the head of Trust and Safety, and Jack Conte that belittle and, in my opinion, insult the creators.
So today, let's take a look at this latest story about the man who was suspended, what's going on with Patreon, and I want to talk about why Patreon needs to behave very differently from these other social media companies, lest they become...
Valueless, and just dangerous for people to use.
But before we get started, please head over to TimCast.com forward slash donate if you want to support my work.
There's a monthly donation option, I take cryptocurrency, I have a physical address, and there's a shop where you can buy t-shirts that I've actually designed myself.
Yesterday, around noon, we saw this tweet from Scott Helm, who is a hacker, researcher, builder of things, he founded security headers and reportery.
He tweeted, So Patreon suspended my account.
They did this in secret.
They have not notified me.
I simply noticed that they stopped sending me money.
They haven't stopped collecting money, though.
They're just keeping it.
No account notification.
No email.
I just have this tiny little message hidden in the account section on the site.
Your creator balance is on hold while our trust and safety team review your account.
He continues.
What an awful way to treat people.
They can still send me their crappy newsletter but letting me know that I've been suspended and my money won't be arriving right before the holidays?
That's some next level ass.
He then posted this image that says suspicious activity on your account.
And that, because of this activity, they've suspended payouts, everything continues as normal, but he's not going to receive his money.
He adds, I don't know how they detected this suspicious activity, but it was enough for
them to take action, but not enough for them to tell me.
This suspension came between 18 and 47 days ago based on my missed payouts.
No review has taken place in that time.
So Patreon, when can I expect this review to take place?
How do I find out why I was suspended?
When will I receive my money?
Shortly after this, he got a notification that someone actually pledged a dollar to him, a new patron.
Unfortunately, he couldn't actually receive the money because his account is suspended.
He said, this is seriously bad.
But just a couple hours ago, Scott tweeted, it's a Christmas miracle.
With no explanation and no apology, Patreon have said that I can have the money that others donated to me.
And this is where an interesting conundrum arises.
This last phrase, he says, I can have the money that others donated to me.
Patreon isn't giving anybody money.
Patreon just facilitates a transaction from one person to another, and you pay them a fee to do so.
But aside from suspending someone's donations without notice, which in my opinion is an egregious offense against the individual, because we're talking about payment, It's also bad when you realize that they're injecting their politics in between the user and you.
Now, look, don't get me wrong.
Patreon probably has no choice but to suspend certain people when it comes to legal issues and the rules they have to abide by with their payment processors, that I understand.
But this means they have to go above and beyond and be held to a higher standard to make sure people are notified when their money is being frozen.
Patreon must have competition.
They cannot end up dominating the space for one reason.
We are essentially giving ourselves a supervisor.
We work for ourselves when we make content.
And you, who decides to donate to us to support that content, have nothing to do with Patreon.
But Patreon has rules, and they're injecting those rules in between you and your customer.
And I understand that exists for most services.
Even Patreon has to abide by rules with Mastercard.
But because Patreon is downstream from the payment processors, they're going to enforce rules at a much stricter level than other companies would.
We've essentially put ourselves in a position where, without meaningful competition, we have to ask permission to an extent.
I'm being a bit hyperbolic.
Of Patreon to say or do certain things, as we saw in the conversation with Matt Christensen and Jacqueline Hart.
She said, if you ever want to reach out and ask us if something is okay, you can do so.
But why do I need to ask them? I don't work for them. In fact, Patreon works for me.
I pay them a fee to guarantee that this job is taken care of. Isn't that rather absurd?
Could you imagine if you hired a contractor and said, I would like to pay you a fee
to fix my door? And he says, okay, I'll only do it if you agree not to say certain words.
I'd be like, well, that's kind of weird.
I mean, honestly, I can agree to that.
It's no problem.
But what if they said, they would take your money, never finish your door, if retroactively they found out 10 months ago you said a bad word?
It seems rather ridiculous, doesn't it?
Patreon is not our boss.
They work for us.
So it becomes rather problematic when you realize that this individual, Scott Helm, had his money frozen by a company he had hired to do a job.
This is where we're heading if there is no competition with Patreon, and they aren't forced to do better for their clients.
But it actually does get worse.
Now, I did cover this in my livestream yesterday, but I think it's important to be included in this video.
I want to provide something that's a bit more succinct.
The New York Times says Patreon bars anti-feminist for racist speech inciting revolt.
In the New York Times, a section reads, Mr. Benjamin did not respond to attempts to engage him in the reform process, Ms.
Hart said.
But this kind of moves the goal posts.
If it was an appeal, they asked Sargon to explain why it wasn't hate speech, not to apologize or reform his behavior, which they could have done.
But she goes on.
His response to us when we told him about the reform process was to nitpick and say I was being anti-Nazi, Ms.
Hart said.
You cannot say those words on our platform.
It doesn't matter who you're directing them at.
But this is just untrue, and it seems to me that she is willfully misleading the New York Times, and it shows the duplicitous nature of Patreon staff.
In a conversation with Matt Christensen, Jacqueline Hart acknowledged that Sargon did not say these words on their platform.
Jack Conte said the same thing to me.
But now to say to the New York Times, you cannot say those words on our platform, is to imply that Sargon did, when in fact he didn't.
It's also to imply that those words don't exist on their platform.
They do, in many of the top podcasts.
I wonder why that is.
But it actually gets much, much worse.
The story continues.
Those quitting Patreon in solidarity with Mr. Benjamin may have other motives behind their sudden outrage, Mr. Conte said.
As content creators using the site grow more famous and their income more significant, the 5% cut that Patreon takes of their donations may have begun to seem cumbersome, he said.
Other large creators are joining the rebellion, and they link to Sword and Scale, the fifth largest podcast, who has announced their intention to leave the platform as soon as possible.
He said, You can use a press debacle like this to drum up your community and rile people up and get them to support a cause, Mr. Conte said.
We welcome competition.
Jack Conte is actually arguing that those of us who have lost thousands of dollars per month did it on purpose because we're upset about losing 5%.
No.
People started canceling their patronage to me, and I reacted by trying to find alternatives so I didn't lose that support.
But for the most part, considering what happened with Subscribestar, I am down.
But then to imply that the outrage is to generate support for a cause is also rather absurd.
I'm losing money by doing this.
Do you think I want to tell people that there are alternatives that exist when they just cancel on me?
No, I'm desperately trying to make sure that those support me can continue to do so.
Seeing Jack Conte's statement, seeing Jacqueline Hart's statement, says to me that Patreon actually doesn't care.
Look at what happened with Scott Helm.
His money was frozen, his account suspended, and he was never notified.
That is inexcusable.
We're talking about people's money here.
But Patreon will say one thing to us, and another thing to the New York Times in their own defense.
And when you see what they say to the New York Times, it sounds like they really just don't care about creators.
Understand how dangerous that becomes.
Patreon cannot ever become like Facebook.
Now admittedly, it may just result in the end of Patreon.
If it gets to a point where people aren't getting paid out, they'll stop using the service.
But if no competition can actually come to existence because they all keep getting shut down, then what choice will people have?
I don't want Patreon to be my supervisor telling me what I can or can't do.
But I want to focus on some alternatives right now, most notably Esther, which was created by Naomi Wu in response to, well, her being deplatformed now multiple times.
In response to this story from the New York Times, Naomi Wu said, that's right folks, only white dudes being affected by the deplatforming, no one else.
For the record, my YouTube channel is only slightly smaller than Sargon's, and much larger than most of the ones run by the white dudes getting quoted in the media.
Naomi Wu was using Subscribestar before most other people, and when activists got mad that Sargon and others were using it, they basically got the whole service shut down, negatively impacting Naomi Wu, who just makes technology content.
She tweeted, The pro-deplatforming camp is uninterested in the issue of collateral damage from their campaigns, so refuses to signal boost fundraising for Esther.co, a Patreon alternative for the marginalized people they have inadvertently defunded.
Esther.co is a Patreon alternative being set up by Naomi Wu.
It reads, Are you a woman, LGBTQ+, and or person of color or ally?
We want you.
Make a profile, build a fan base with your exclusive content and make money.
We provide a supportive community and transparent fees.
Whether you have 100,000 fans or 100 fans, we're here to help you succeed.
Now, it's my understanding that Esther is not functional as of right now, and Naomi Wu is running a GoFundMe to raise $20,000 to get the service up and running.
We also have this statement yesterday from Jordan Peterson, who said, This is a very instructive thread.
Repatreon.
RubinReport and I will make a joint announcement between Xmas and New Year's Day, still working out multiple possible solutions.
There's also Bitbacker.io, the crypto-fueled Patreon alternative.
And there's a reason why I highlight these specifically.
For one, Naomi Wu was collateral damage from these far-left activists.
She is now trying to set up an LGBTQ-plus-friendly version of Patreon.
Then you have Jordan Pearson and Dave Rubin, who are particularly prominent and have made an announcement about an alternative, and will be making another announcement soon.
And Bitbacker.io is important because it's a cryptocurrency-based version of Patreon.
Unfortunately, for maker support, for, I believe, BitChute had a service, and for Subscribestar, payment processors will likely shut you down.
If there is a service that is going to function like a Patreon service, it's going to have to do exchanges with cryptocurrency to avoid getting shut down if it wants to.
And that means the technology will have to advance to a point where the average person can just subscribe with one click, Same as Patreon, you sign up, you subscribe, use your credit card, and that money does a transaction via a cryptocurrency.
However, the challenge still exists in converting U.S.
dollars and fiat currency into cryptocurrency.
So my advice to all of you right now, if you haven't done so already, I recommend you start Googling how crypto works, how you can start looking into some of these services, potentially acquire some Bitcoin.
Be careful, it's volatile.
I want to make one more point about Bitcoin I made in another video on my second channel.
The value of the coin doesn't matter.
What cryptocurrency does is allows you to instantly exchange value over the internet in a secure way.
If you buy Bitcoin, $20 worth of Bitcoin, and send it to me, and then I immediately convert it to USD, I get that $20 back.
Granted, there are some small fees, but for the most part, I don't have to worry about volatility.
So what's really powerful about crypto is that you're just instantly sending value from one person to another, regardless of the current cost of Bitcoin.
So let me know what you think in the comments below.
We'll keep the conversation going.
I mean, is any of this information surprising to you?
Do you think that Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin will come out with a viable alternative, or that Esther will function?
Let me know.
We'll keep the conversation going.
You can follow me on Twitter at TimCast.
Stay tuned.
New videos every day at 4 p.m.
And I'll have more videos on my second channel, youtube.com slash TimCastNews, starting at 6 p.m.
