Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/26/facebook-patreon.html
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6 Likes
The free trial suscription thing reminds me of an old critique of udemy.
FTFY 
15 Likes
Just when you thought Facebook couldn’t get any sillier.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, let me just stop you right there. I never believed that!
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Anybody waiting for FaceFuckingBook to do the right thing, has a long hard wait ahead of them.
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I think I recall that patreon is struggling with their business model - not in the sense that it’s unsuccessful, but in the sense that they’re aspiring to some ridiculously high profit growth, so they might possibly kill their own business, and leave an opening for someone else (hopefully not facebook)
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The culture of reaching for ever-increasingly impossible profit growth is terrible and seems especially prevalent in the tech-sector. It keeps killing otherwise useful or novel ideas.
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It’s the Venture Capital Curse
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That’s the thing that drives me most insane about capitalism as it exists today. It’s never enough for a business to just be good at doing what they do and be profitable. They have to be ever growing and expanding to feed the investor crowd or they’re seen as a failure. Like a few years ago I was thinking that like there is a Starbucks on every other corner. They are king of the coffee market and got away with getting people to pay 10 times what they used to for coffee… and yet they felt compelled to start making breakfast sandwiches and selling CDs too. I keep thinking “Enough already”!
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I’d think that a company making billions of dollars in profits and collecting petabytes of data about what people will and will not click on probably has some high-quality analysts on staff saying that this is a good idea and that there are piles money to be made. But it’s starting to feel doubtful.
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There has been talk of users abandoning FB, but I’m sure they still have a large enough hive of users that they think simply offering a Patreon-like service will garner them a big payday. And it could if there are enough people who think FB will get them access to a larger audience, the 30% cut might actually be worth it if you triple your fans. But the clause about the “royalty-free, worldwide license” that never ends is the deal killer-- anyone who sees that (and understands it) will hard pass.
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But on the other hand, how many people have ever heard of Patreon? It’s just some guy in his mom’s basement, right? /s
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Ohhh, this is so bad. (“We take up to 30% plus we keep a copyright to your work that we already made money off of, forever”?) And you know that Facebook is big enough, and in some countries, ubiquitous enough, that if they launch this, even with these terrible terms, people will use it. Lots and lots of people.
The thing is, Facebook effectively is the internet in many countries. So maybe that’s true in the US (especially given Patreon, etc.), but outside the US? India, Brazil, Indonesia, etc.? If it’s the difference between “I get something (even if thoroughly plundered by FB) and I get nothing”? I don’t know.
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I think you hit the nail on the head. Facebook will have emerging economies under their thumb before they ever have a chance for home-grown control.
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And I’m sure Facebook will require an account for the privilege of using this feature.
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Way hard to listen to (this guy pops his Ps and Bs into his mic a lot).
from memory:
Basically, Udemy monetized his content–python lectures. When he complained, he was told that in order for Udemy to stop, he would have to
a) join udemy (in order to actually view the videos behind the paywall, and thus submit a valid DMCA takedown)
b) accept the licensing terms that udemy imposed.
c) realize that the terms meant that he would not get paid, should udemy decide to promote his content with discounted offers, advertising, etc.
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That seems extraordinarily slimy.
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Frankly, anyone who uses Facebook, Twitter, etc. has subbasement level intelligence. This is as close as I come to social media; social media gives you social diseases.
It’s not going to be Weyland-Yutani who bring the xenomorphs down to earth. It’s going to be Facebook.
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