I don’t envy the choices that Jack Conte’s team has in front of it right now. It’s like quicksand that someone threw broken glass into, and I think they’re just trying to get out while limiting the permanent scars.
But I do know that Patreon should never have been at risk of this awkward moment in the first place. This week, Conte announced that the company was having to reset its entire business model at the behest of Apple, a massive, inflexible company that wants three out of every ten dollars the internet creates just because it built a digital storefront on a pocket slab.
The video of Conte, having to basically switch up his entire company’s way of doing business for the sake of a company facing an antitrust suit, is a fascinating document to be studied by MBAs years into the future:
Conte, in happier times, convinced thousands of creators and millions of people that this was a worthy path forward for supporting creators on the internet. And say what you will about the tool and its gobs of VC funding, but it has gotten further than most. He owes a lot to the people his company supports. And it’s quite clear from watching it that he has not forgotten about the promises he made to those people.
“It is Patreon's responsibility to do everything in our power to give creators options that help you maintain your earnings,” Conte says at one point.
This video is a great bit of corporate communications. But it is also reflective of a mistake the company made many years ago: To allow people to support patrons directly through its app. Patreon did not need to do this. It was just a website at first, and for all the good things that can be said about the company, fact is they built on shaky land. To go to my earlier metaphor: They built their foundation on quicksand, perhaps without realizing it, though the broken glass wasn’t thrown in just yet.
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That shaky land isn’t the web, and if Patreon had stayed there, this would not be an issue. It’s the mobile app ecosystem, which honestly treats everyone poorly whether they want to admit it or not.
Let’s be clear—there’s no reason the app ecosystem needs to be shaky. It is only painful and damaging because Apple has decided that it’s a medium in which it needs to get regular rent. But Apple has long treated its developers poorly, and its insistence on trying to accept money for digital services created by people who use apps in its ecosystem really strikes me as particularly offensive. It’s not even direct rent-seeking—it’s at a secondary level.
Conte does great work and appears to be the kind of guy you’d love to have a beer with. (Even amid what I imagine is a busy schedule, he still makes time for Pomplamoose, and creates occasional YouTube classics like this mini-documentary on Rhett and Link.) Even with all the changes Patreon has gone through over the years, he hasn’t lost sight of the mission his company is building. But let me just pose a question here: What if Conte is being too nice here, by just acquiescing to this ugly rent seeking? What if he needs to play a little hardball?
John Gruber had an excellent perspective on this situation, and one I absolutely agree with:
What Patreon seems to be suggesting above is that if they offered a third option—not to allow subscriptions within the iOS app, controlled by each creator for their own subscriptions—that Apple has threatened to remove the Patreon app from the App Store.
I humbly suggest Patreon go ahead with that anyway. Let’s see how many of Patreon’s creators tell Apple to bugger off. And if Apple were to respond by removing Patreon from the App Store for offering this choice, how would that not backfire spectacularly in Apple’s face? I believe it would be a positive publicity bonanza for Patreon, and for high-visibility creators on their platform, as well. And this example would be a disaster for Apple publicity-wise and in the face of growing regulatory and antitrust scrutiny, especially right here in the U.S.
Apple is already taking a beating in the press over its treatment of Patreon in this situation. Good. They deserve it. Within the span of just three months, the company has both put together a symbolic display of its disrespect for creators (in the form of its still-infamous Crush! ad), and a literal one.
At this point, Patreon is already surrounded by broken-glass-filled quicksand, with only a couple of branches to hold onto to possibly get out of it. They’re already not going to get out of this mess unscathed—Apple has ensured that. What do they have to lose if they show a little backbone and blow the whole thing up?
They might just be heroes for more than just the creator economy.
Stable Links
For a system as important to our culture as the internet, it’s wild that we rely on a handful of undersea cables to put it all together.
Related to the above rant, a periodic reminder to not buy things through apps from one Hank Green, who has really become the internet’s conscience over the last year.
My claim earlier this year that 2024 was going to be a disaster for cable appears to be playing out.
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