Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately depending on your viewpoint, it won't matter for much longer. Once Patreon demonstrates the viability of the business, which I think it pretty much has, making a clone won't be that difficult. There's not a lot of technical moat here. (Having to deal with real money means it's certainly more than the HN-mythical "I could do that in a weekend!", but, still, it's definitely in the range of "hobby programmer in under a year with enough dedication" to get a fully functional site up and running to start.)

Speaking as a decently-large Patreon user and one that has advocated for it to the point of probably sounding almost like a shill on HN despite not being connected to them other than as customer... I don't use Patreon to use Patreon qua Patreon, nor do I do use any of their site discovery mechanisms to discover anyone. YMMV. I support the artists. If and when the artists I follow move around, I will follow them; I've already got a couple of recurring Paypal payments for people who work that way.

Ultimately Patreon's political preferences won't matter for much. It may superficially resemble the debate about Facebook/Google news filtering algorithms, but the situation is actually entirely different and the question isn't all that relevant in the long term. I think the fact that we're not talking about "free" here helps a lot.

> Sorry, but "we don't need evidence, our imagination is enough" is not anywhere near "very reasonable".

The video literally shows clips of behavior. The common theme of the video is “manifest observable behavior”. The video explains how actions, not speech, are what broke the terms of service. I really recommend you watch it. (Odd use of quotation marks – you directly quoted me, but completely made up what Patreon said.)

> Just because the Patreon guys are fans of Antifa […]

If they were such fans, I'm not sure they'd have removed IGD.

> The video literally shows clips of behavior.

I see you are new to the game of presenting video clips out of context and manipulating the audience.

> The common theme of the video is “manifest observable behavior”. The video explains how actions, not speech, are what broke the terms of service. I really recommend you watch it. (Odd use of quotation marks – you directly quoted me, but completely made up what Patreon said.)

That video was widely commented, for example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_yIp7eQO1c

That odd quotation said what exactly Patreon did, not what they said they are doing.

> I see you are new to the game of presenting video clips out of context and manipulating the audience.

Yeah, right. Lauren Southern, complaining about being removed: "I was in no way a part of Defend Europe. I was merely an observer".

Lauren Southern, ON Defend Europe: "Go go go, get in front of them! You need to get in front, come around, block them and they'll have to stop", "And if the politicians won't stop them, then we will!"

Yeah. "Observer".

But tell us all about how our "context" is wrong, and Lauren was maligned.

I watched that response video. Basically, what he's saying is "these actions that endanger people in the immediate sense are justified". That standard is asking Patreon to make a political judgment. The creators in question were seen endangering others in their work. Period.

>I see you are new to the game of presenting video clips out of context and manipulating the audience.

This is a meaningless accusation without evidence.

I hadn't heard of her, or defend Europe, or this controversy, or anything. Watched the Patreon explanation video, which seemed pretty damn convincing, objective, and evidence-based to me.

Did you even watch the video? lol.

IGD is an antifa website...