Hey everyone,
You may remember that last month, we announced our new Creator Policy Engagement Program designed to build trust and transparency into the development and communication of Patreon’s policies.
Hundreds of you tuned in to our first ever Policy Livestream and shared input across our various feedback channels. Over the last three weeks, the Policy Team has refined the proposed policy updates, and today, the proposals have become Patreon policy!
You can head to the blog to learn more about these updates, what the team learned from creator feedback, and how to keep in touch with our Policy team.
I think most of the response will be along the lines of: all these words are good, but implementation is everything.
I had to force my brain to read past the PR-speak in the beginning. It’s easy to form committees and programs, and it’s the go-to for companies and organizations that have lost their way, and realize it, but don’t know how to fix it.
The truth is Patreon is probably too big with too diverse a community for stuff like this to be effective. Jack Conte talked a lot about how so many businesses these days are built on integrations in a recent video on his personal channel. I had a sense that he would somehow make a connection between that and the title of the video that referenced a huge funding round, but he never did. It’s not clear what Patreon is actually trying to be. Patreon is still a big, homogenous silo that’s trying and failing to serve everyone, and it feels like all the proposals and programs and outreach is aimed at finding a way to make that work.
Look at how Twitter is slowly working its way to something like what I thought Patreon was doing when it bought Memberful. Twitter is talking federation, buying up stuff like Revue and talking subscriptions. It’s working its way to be a platform of platforms that people combine and build into something that serves their needs and the needs of their communities.
I don’t see anything like this in the announcement. I see more of the same trying to patch the holes in a big silo that doesn’t serve anyone well.
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