Thread by @baph0meat

alright guys. im honestly too tired to get super far into it, but i want to quickly type up the things that, to me, were the biggest takeaways from the patreon community live.
threading.

- they are not taking anniversary billing off the table, despite passionate and consistent feedback. over 200 creators attended the stream; in the very fast-moving chat, i think i saw 3-4 people who were for AB. everyone else was very, very vocally against.

- existing pledges wouldnt be changed by an implemented AB solution. this means if NOW u have X patrons pledging a total of Y$ for you on the first of the month, all of that will stay the same. this was my biggest concern + i dont understand why this wasnt communicated sooner.

i am still opposed to AB, and more than anything i am angry that we aren't being listened to, but i think this point is really important. i think it could alleviate a lot of the fear felt by ppl who rely on that 1st of the month payout. it should have been clarified immediately.

it still creates a situation where anyone fortunate enough to have built up a meaningful payout on the current system would survive, but new creators + growing creators would find it extremely difficult to reach that same kind of security. we should still fight for those people.

it also does not address the difficulties AB creates in monthly reward fulfillment, especially physical rewards, and they failed to answer questions abt that topic aside from rambling and eventually saying "we wouldn't want to do anything that causes creator burnout."

- they discussed they surveys that led them to exploring AB as a solution, and here is where the chat became INCANDESCENTLY angry, bc the sample size was 600. there are 200,000+ creators on patreon.

we gave, to put it trimly, very very strong feedback that maybe they should consider a larger sample size.

we gave very strong feedback that the issue AB is supposed to solve (that patrons get "confused" when they pledge in the middle of a month, then get charged again on the first of the next month) could be solved with better communication/better ux. jack claimed they've already--

tried that, but admitted they could keep trying. a user in the chat (i don't remember the name, sorry) brought up the concept of mid-month checkout offering a patron "join now or join on the 1st," which the chat really liked; the resistance put up to this idea was that it's "too-

complex" and could cause abandonment during checkout. we gave very, very firm feedback that maybe this idea should be tested, just like they're insisting on tests for other billing solutions.

jack conte very firmly denied that any of these changes are aimed at improving IPO and says articles about patreon planning to go public this year are not true.

these are the biggest bullet points to me; i'm very tired and i don't want to misquote or miscommunicate anything by trying to dig into anything from memory rather than from my notes. i took caps of slides and may put those together, if not tomorrow then on monday

the live was, overall, kind of shaky, + made me + many others very angry bc it definitely felt like "we think you're mad because you're too stupid to understand AB, so here's a powerpoint about AB" instead them delivering on promises of listening to us and improving communication

but it's more than we would have gotten if we hadn't made as much noise as we have, so thank you, everyone, for staying united and vocal about this, and please stay informed so they can't push things through when we get tired. the next community live is on march 4th.

alright, let's go through some of the slides. notes before i start: these are in chronological order, but i didn't cap everything, i've only capped stuff i wanted to comment on. i've cropped out the presenter bc i don't want to post a dozen pics of a stranger's face, but i -

left in the rest of the screen bc i don't think it's a great idea to set a precedent of posting contextless words on a white bg and saying "this is what patreon officially said!!!" if that makes sense; i want it to be totally visually clear what the source is.

also please note that this was a presentation where the presenter was addressing us aloud and adding context/explanations to what was on screen; i am not going to try to match parts of the speech to the slides from memory, i'm just commenting on the slide content.

here are some stats we were shown positing that the current billing method means people are less likely to join as patrons at the end of the month, and more likely to delete their pledge when the first charge of their second month comes in. i get it, and i get why these numbers -

would make patreon think there's room for improvement. my immediate thoughts, tho, are 1. the pledge deletion due to misunderstanding that the 1st of the month charge is coming is still a communication issue, not a billing issue, and 2. drawing in patrons is my job, not patreon's

this is 100% subjective, there are probably creators who disagree w me; but fwiw, all i could think while being shown slides of how patron draw isnt Statistically Perfect rn was "i dont care." i CERTAINLY dont want patreon making decisions i disagree with, about MY MONEY, over it

patreon is a service that i use to aggregate + process payments my audience makes to me, + that i use to showcase content for that audience in return. it's not a marketing service. MY job is to gain and keep patrons. their job is to process payments in a way that works for us.

anyway. next they showed us this, abt new patrons deleting after being charged for their 2nd month bc of the mistaken belief they were "overcharged." i capped this for one reason: WHY would you add "overcharged" as an exit survey reason if this is a well known misunderstanding??

why are you creating a situation where a client who has misunderstood the billing process can then reinforce that misunderstanding by clicking it on the exit survey, then using the fact that people clicked it as proof that the misunderstanding is impossible to clear up....?

this is probably the slide that made me the angriest all night.
"if we increase awareness, we decrease conversion."
patreon said, to our FACES, that they think making sure our patrons are fully informed about transactions is a bad thing, because Number Go Down.

it's hard for me to explain how mad this makes me, lmao. like im trying not to be dramatic but this makes me livid. if the outcome of a potential supporter completely understanding how billing works is they decide "actually, i dont want to do this," I WANT THEM TO DECIDE THAT

pretty much the only reason ever given on exit surveys when i lose patrons is "my financial situation changed." people are not fucking made of money. and yet a LOT of people still choose to give some of what they have every month to the artists they want to support.

my priority is not to wring ppl dry. it made me VERY angry to have ptrn throwing numbers in my face abt how ppl pledge less at the end of the month (when their next rent is coming up!), then basically imply it would be better if we could just trick people into impulse purchases

if ppl have to cancel pledges, it's probably bc they can't afford it rn. if ppl decide not to pledge, that's probably very often bc they can't afford it rn. i do not agree w or sympathize w patreon acting like this is some kind of nasty inconvenience that needs to be ironed out

this is more numbers they threw at us abt how patrons have to adapt to the first of the month billing cycle, to which i say... yeah? if u deliver monthly rewards, u want ppl to know abt it at the beginning of the month? and also how we choose to promo is still our job, not theirs

here's them admitting that a lot of this is about them, not about us, and trying to complain about how hard it is to process payments as a ..... payment processing platform.

here's slides about the polls they used to justify the first attempt to force AB through. 600 creators, 400 patrons, 5 interviews. the 49% who said they didnt want billing to change were referred to as "a minority" (you can see the chat reacting to that)

i'm assuming these numbers are from the survey that patreon lied about on twitter.

https://twitter.com/PatreonSupport/status/1352686725236051968?s=20

a lot of the frustration during the live came from the fact that, while hundreds of us were in the chat expressing anger+confusion at choices like these being made over tiny, unclear sample sizes, they continued to talk over us+say these polls were indicative of how Creators Feel

"we acknowledge the desire for optionality from some creators." man, i would hope so.
"optionality has some drawbacks: again, difficult but not impossible." i capped this w the same energy of someone who is intending to write a massive callout post several months down the line

in the chat of this cap in particular u can see the massive loss of trust continuing to happen among creators watching the live, lmao. the entire time it seemed like most of us just felt really discouraged.

this is the last of the slides that i capped, and it was the first time they (sort of) addressed some of the biggest anxieties a lot of us have had about this. i left my desktop bar in the first one so that you can see these fears were addressed FORTY-FIVE MINUTES into the live.

that's all ive got. i believe a recording of the live will be available @ some point, but i know we dont all have time to sit down + watch 1.5hrs of corporate waffling + non-answers just to be caught up. again, my commentary is exactly that; subjective + specific to my viewpoint

a few things i want to say, despite my tone about all of this being very angry lol:
- i get that they had prepared remarks and that it’s hard to just ditch your script when the audience you’re presenting to erupts in anger instead of going “oh, yay, we get it and we love you now”

that being said, they’ve been repeatedly promising better communication and a better relationship, and i hope they learn from this that ppl don’t like it when u spend an hour saying “creators feel XYZ :)” when several hundred of us in real time are shrieking “NO WE DON’T”

- i also get that trying to be more transparent with us earlier in the process means a lot of questions just cant be answered yet. it’s frustrating, but i prefer it to the alternative theyve often defaulted to, which is leaving us entirely out of the loop and springing shit on us

we will have to be, within reason, patient. “we are trying to find a billing situation that doesn’t include [all the shit that makes u guys furious], but who knows!” sucks, but it’s a step up from “we are moving towards a billing solution that everyone hates without asking first”

anyway i have to stop talking about this before i give myself hypertension but yeah. that’s where we’re at. let’s stay on top of it :’)