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Patreon Lays Off 20% of Its Workforce (www.patreon.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1283158/patreon-lays-off-20-of-its-workforce

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[–] 93 points 2 months ago (20 children)

Combined with the fee increase to 10%, this seems like an effort to boost profitability for an IPO.

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  • [–] 47 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Unfortunate that the plan is to go public. Ideally the people who run it would be valued as stewards and curators instead of interchangeable cogs.

    I hope to see one of these DIY platforms eventually become a cooperative.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 months ago (14 children)

    I will start asking creators I support to switch to Ko-fi.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (12 children)

    I wish they'd just switch to Zelle...

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (11 children)

    Zelle (/zɛl/) is an American digital payments network run by a private financial services company owned by Bank of America, Truist, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelle

    I don't know how much of an improvement that would really be in the long-term

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (10 children)

    Why's that?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (9 children)

    I don't know big American banks to be very consumer friendly, and

    There is currently no fee or charge on the transaction to users.[1] Instead, participating banking institutions are charged a fee per transaction.[4]

    This part tells me that your individual bank probably isn't a huge fan of it, and there's no guarantee that it won't change in the future. And finally,

    The Zelle service has received negative publicity due to fraud incidents where bank customers’ accounts were compromised through social engineering tactics. In these cases, fraudsters set up Zelle accounts in the victims’ names and used them to transfer funds out of the victims’ accounts, often leaving the victims with limited practical or legal options for recovery.

    If there is a problem with the service, I'm not sure how helpful Zelle would be in fixing it.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (8 children)

    I don’t know big American banks to be very consumer friendly

    They're not supposed to be. The thing is, in this case, the consumers' interest is aligned with the banks, and against companies like PayPal/Venmo, Cash App, Patreon, credit card companies, and a hundred other payment processors who are all trying to take a relatively large portion of the transaction simply because they can.

    This part tells me that your individual bank probably isn’t a huge fan of it

    It was created by the banks, so yes, they definitely are.

    The Zelle service has received negative publicity

    Zelle functions like cash, ACH, or wire transfer. Similarly, it has no protections like cash. There is no intermediary, which means no one to collect fees, but also no one to protect you in the case that you mistakenly give your money to the wrong person. It's up to you to ensure that you're sending your money to the right place.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    @artyom as someone who is trying hard to build a better way to support people. The payment processor math (Stripe) is absolutely brutal. I wanted a much lower overhead than I ended up with, but most of what I do have, I never see!

    It’s important to me to not try and mask this stuff as an extra charge or fee and keep things transparent as possible. I wish there was a better way.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (6 children)

    Sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to say. Stripe "math" is brutal? What does that mean?

    Zelle has no overhead and no extra charges or fees, its completely free. That's why I recommend it.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    @artyom Stripe, the payment processor that most of these platforms (including https://slowcl.app/) use charges both percent and flat fee on every transaction, and depending on how you set up your payout model, more on payouts. Zelle can’t be used to replace it unfortunately.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (4 children)

    Yes, I understand Stripe bad. Why can't Zelle replace it?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

    @artyom Zelle can’t be used for commercial platforms, has no ability to split income, and has no API. It’s really only good for direct bank to bank transfers.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    Why do you need a "commercial platform"? I feel like it's important to consider the context here (Patreon) where you're transferring money to creators who have already provided a service. This doesn't require an API. Bank to bank transfers is all that's required. You can split income after the funds are received.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    @artyom Are you saying that creators should drop patronage platforms entirely and just request direct transfers from Zelle?

    Because any patronage platform is commercial and wouldn’t be able to use Zelle. Zelle also can’t support recurring billing so subscriptions wouldn’t work.

    If you’re saying creators should drop patronage platforms entirely, there’s an argument for that, but I think it would introduce a lot of other issues at any decent scale.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Are you saying that creators should drop patronage platforms entirely and just request direct transfers from Zelle?

    Correct

    Zelle also can’t support recurring billing so subscriptions wouldn’t work.

    It actually can.

    I think it would introduce a lot of other issues at any decent scale.

    I don't see any "other issues" that could possibly be bigger than the existing ones.

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