There are still Ko-Fi, SubscribeStar, as well as YouTube memberships. To say nothing about OnlyFans and Fansly, which have been trying to become less… porn-dependent.

YouTube memberships? Demonetization on YouTube is one of the main things that drives people to use Patreon.

Demonetization on YouTube means YouTube won't show ads on your videos so you don't get money from them, and YouTube recommends them less.

Having members on YouTube doesn't impact that at all. The members will pay and discover, same as if they were on Patreon. Non-members might have a harder time discovering, but it's not like it's easy to discover content through Patreon either.

If there’s a need in the market someone will step in and fill the void. Probably it’s for the best if they don’t get greedy and keep it simple, shave a bit as a fee and that’s all.

> If there’s a need in the market someone will step in and fill the void.

Only if the Visa/Mastercard duopoly approves. It's not a real market.

You don't need cards to make payments anymore. At least in the UK you can make direct payments from your bank through a standard e-commerce checkout.

Cardless Subscriptions are also here (disclaimer, that's my role at a large open banking company) although some more legislation needs to be done before they can be used for ecommerce

Exactly, plus PayPal/Venmo-- look at how they pulled the plug on Mintpress.

Tell that to Parler and the aftermath of their disastrous data leak. There needs to be more respect for the effort that goes into making well built online services. Turns out its much harder than a lot of people realize.

I don't think that'd be the case. When Russia started war against Ukraine, a lot creators left the platform by simply taking subscriber contacts and moved to a different platform. You pay for individual creators, so whether it's Patreon, YouTube,or Substack, people are likely to follow into a new platform.

OnlyFans is just waiting to be “legit”

SubscribeStar does basically the same thing, right? I imagine everyone would just move right over, business as usual.

It's not that straightforward.

For the Creator, even if you exclude the things that interact with Patreon to do the benefit-management bits, you have to also do any KYC/Identity verification bits, re-setup account transfers.

Then you need to reach out to all your supporters and convince them to move over. They're going to lose some percentage of those people -- how much is going to depend on the creator and the fanbase. Some people are just going to ignore it, every single one of them though are going to re-evaluate that math in their head as to whether they really want to continue supporting that person.

Patreon also has major brand-awareness. Someone telling you to move over to SubscribeStar, Liberapay, Buy Me a Coffee or whatever might get a "This seems like a scam" type reaction.

Moving over for a content creator is probably trivial. Having all their patrons move over with them is most certainly not.

A lot of those demonetized YouTubers are technical ones, not political. Electronics, chemistry, software, history, etc.

The queer lefty independent webcomics scene leans on Patreon a lot too, I’m one of them.

Normally you'd think its just right wingers and yeah a lot of their garbage ends up demonetized but its also people that are pro-Union, anti-establishment (right wing and left wing), people who are anti-empire/anti-war/anti-Israel/Pro-palestine (Abby Martin for example). Craziest example I heard of recently is people who post anti-Tesla videos are getting attacked and demonetized by their fanboys.