Facebook Wants Up To 30 Percent of Fan Subscriptions Vs Patreon's 5 Percent (techcrunch.com) 81
Facebook's Patreon-like Fan Subscriptions feature lets people pay a monthly fee for access to a creator's exclusive content. But, as TechCrunch reports, it greatly differs from Patreon in that the social network "plans to take up to a 30 percent cut of subscription revenue minus fees, compared to 5 percent by Patreon, 30 percent by YouTube which covers fees, and 50 percent by Twitch." "Facebook also reserves the right to offer free trials to subscriptions that won't compensate creators," TechCrunch reports. "And Facebook demands a 'non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use' creators' content and 'This license survives even if you stop using Fan Subscriptions.'" From the report: Distrust of Facebook could scare creators away from the platform when combined with its significant revenue share and ability to give away or repurpose creators' content. Facebook has consistently shown that it puts what it thinks users want and its own interests above those of partners. It cut off game developers from viral channels, inadequately warned Page owners their reach with drop over time, decimated referral traffic to news publishers, and most recently banished video makers from the feed. If Facebook wants to win creators' trust and the engagement of their biggest fans, it may need a more competitive offering with larger limits on its power.
Facebook began testing Fan Subscriptions a year to give creators a financial alternative to maximizing ad views after watching the rise of Patreon which now has 3 million patrons who'll pay 100,000 artists, comedians, models, and makers over $500 million this year. This month Facebook expanded the test to the UK, Spain, Germany, and Portugal to allow users to pay $4.99 per month to a creator for exclusive content, live videos, and a profile badge that highlights them as a subscriber. While Twitch owns gamers, YouTube rules amongst videographers, and Patreon is a favorite with odd-ball creators, Facebook may see an opportunity to popularize Fan Subscriptions internationally and turn mainstream consumers into paid supporters. The terms for Fan Subscriptions are not publicly available, and only visible on Facebook's site to Pages it's invited to test the feature. But TechCrunch has published the full policy document [in their report].
Facebook began testing Fan Subscriptions a year to give creators a financial alternative to maximizing ad views after watching the rise of Patreon which now has 3 million patrons who'll pay 100,000 artists, comedians, models, and makers over $500 million this year. This month Facebook expanded the test to the UK, Spain, Germany, and Portugal to allow users to pay $4.99 per month to a creator for exclusive content, live videos, and a profile badge that highlights them as a subscriber. While Twitch owns gamers, YouTube rules amongst videographers, and Patreon is a favorite with odd-ball creators, Facebook may see an opportunity to popularize Fan Subscriptions internationally and turn mainstream consumers into paid supporters. The terms for Fan Subscriptions are not publicly available, and only visible on Facebook's site to Pages it's invited to test the feature. But TechCrunch has published the full policy document [in their report].
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To be fair Patreon was doing superbly. 5% covered payment fees and paid for itself with network effects, and also by making it easy and possible for subscribers to easily share their funds across multiple creators.
Then they tried to fuck over the subscribers to make more profit, then they tried to fuck over the creators to make more profit and then they went all political and now they're in financial trouble.
Idiots.
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Interesting. I've noticed a few sites and video channels relying on Patreon in recent times, but wasn't aware of the controversy. More details or relevant links, please?
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https://www.polygon.com/2017/1... [polygon.com] - charging people 38c for a $1 contribution.
https://www.allsides.com/blog/... [allsides.com]
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Thanks. I had no idea they'd upset so many people over the past couple of years.
How about a method (Score:3)
No need for 3rd party politicly active payment services.
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No more 10% to 30% loss in funds to some political CC, service, network demanding creative control over the content creators publications.
Re:How about a method (Score:5, Insightful)
No need for 3rd party politicly active payment services.
They're all politically active. All the big payment processors have dropped people for political reasons, mostly for political or religious hate speech. I'm no fan of the groups they've dropped, but I'm no fan of the processors being able to refuse to process payments on ideological grounds either, so as far as I'm concerned there are no winners involved. If it can go one way in a liberal context, it can as easily go the other way in a conservative one.
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More money and support direct to the content creator with no fear of not getting funding due to politics.
Let the supporters, fans and users decide who they want to fund and why.
A small number of near monopoly banking products should not be the funding method used.
Time for some tech freedom and funding competition away from politics and virtue signalling.
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Time for some tech freedom and funding competition away from politics
You can't get away from politics without being a hermit. You can either make it work for you, or get worked over by it.
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Knew an alcoholic that said something similar about drinking.
Politics is what happens when people disagree. Alcohol doesn't leap down your throat.
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> It would be easy to establish direct payments
Easy is relative, and a lot of people aren't as up to the challenge of managing that as you may believe. I think 5% for Patreon providing a platform for some content and handling payments seamlessly on behalf of their users is reasonable. 30% is definitely not.
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they portray themselves as someone who pays creators
Oh, that's dodgy as hell if it's true. Set up a patreon account, post some utter shite that's a by-product of your daily activities and then hit them with a minimum wage claim.
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I'm currently using Patreon to pay several people, and that's a lot more convenient than setting up several different payment streams. Individual contributions have problems at both ends.
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In a lot of cases Patreon doesn't host the content. People post content on YouTube, DeviantArt, their own web sites, distributed by e-mail, etc. and just collect payments via Patreon. I have a joke page [patreon.com] on Patreon and all they host for me is that page and monthly single-sentence announcements.
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Bitcoin? But it's too hard for ordinary people to use, and the value fluctuates massively.
If you can come up with a way of donating $5 to someone over the internet without involving any payment processors you will go down in history as one of he great digital pioneers.
They think they're Apple. (Score:2)
Blinding obvious that's why they chose that cut.
Reminds me of the scorpion and frog story (Score:4)
I understand that people have good reasons to hold their nose and use Facebook for staying in touch with friends and family. But there have to be limits. Artists who turn their work over to Zuckerberg and the rest of those cocksuckers deserve what they get.
FTFY (Score:2)
Distrust of Facebook *Should* scare creators away
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Network effects. But the correct answer is to use Facebook for the free attractors and link to the paywalled site that's under full control of the creator.
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Would you use a Credit card that takes 30% from each purchase?
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In a constrained way that's actually necessary in order to provide the service.
E.g. if the sentence you quoted was directly followed by "to promote, attract and deliver the subscription service on behalf of the creator"
In that regard it's similar to Youtube requiring permission to host and share your videos. But this is Facebook so I'm less convinced that this isn't an IP grab in exactly the form you're fearing (and because it's on Facebook I'm not sullying my browser by going to find the T&Cs to check)
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Patreon have 2 million people giving money through the platform every month.
Facebook have nearer to none.
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You realize those 2.32 billion monthly active users on Faceook aren't paying money to support the site, right? If Facebook put up a paywall and required subscriptions, that number would drop faster than stock values during the dot com crash.
Facebook is still a thing? (Score:2)
Seriously? People still use Facebook?
Reminds me of when we were kids and would tape a "kick me" sign to someone's back.
At least selling your soul to the devil usually comes with some real benefits -- but Facebook? I don't get it.
All while screwing their creators over (Score:2)
My take is that most creators still on facebook will leave as soon as there is a reasonable alternative. Facebook just has lost all respect for those that made it big.
Size matters (Score:2)
Now Facebook being a huge multinational it seems to me that creators are likewise cheated getting only 70% -
I support people on Patreon (Score:1)
I support 4 different Patreon accounts. One is for the creator of a piece of software for 3D printing that is continually updated and improved. Three are for artists who provide a ton of content for 3D printing - including an online designer for making builds out of some of those same designs other people are creating among others.
In those cases Patreon is a great platform. They can interact with their patrons easily, have a community board, have posts restricted to patrons and ones that are open to everyon