Patreon is the fundraising site that that many on the right used when Youtube went through its censorship of right wing views and demonetised the advertising for those channels.
From a Smallism perspective it's not a very good model because the minimum fee is $1, this is fine if a viewer watches only a few channels but it can get costly when, as is the case for an increasingly younger audience who rely on streaming content more than traditional TV, creators use the 'per video' model, such as the great Issac Arthurs 'Science and Futurism' channel. Or the monthly subscription model doesn't reward prolific creators as much as they should or could such as Sargon of Akkad. Both channels I have supported.
However, In an amazing twist of Irony, Patreon is now censoring the right, in this case Lauren Southern, while still maintaining the channel supporting Antifa activities.
Laurens ban appears to be because of her support for the defend the shores program, who have claimed that they will rescue those in need at sea, but instead of moving them to the southern shores of Europe, will return them back to the northern shores of Africa. Meanwhile, the Antifa group are calling for more militancy and violence at home.
on the funding model, I actually think this Steemit model fits with the Smallism perspective very well and if steemit was looking for an expansion model, then I think it has the best platform for rewarding content creators than any other system I've seen. They just need to add in the capacity to upload and stream videos instead of relying on links to youtube.
One of the worries I have about linking to youtube is that the original creator does not get the credit as they would do if they could upload their content to Steemit.
Moving on from that there is the potentional for another set of creators who currently aren't being served, and these are the sound and image creators that are used (and usually credited) by the 'name' of the content creator. Steemit provides a platform whereby those sub-creators could also be credited. The 'name' would create a list of people who were linked to the creation of each video and a percentage of the steemit rewards would be shared between them.
This - to my mind would be perfect. Everyone would get paid for the work they did and consumers would pay a price that would allow more content to be consumed for the price of a patreon subscription.
I write about this because this is very much the philosophy behind the smallism paradigm. Everyone should get paid, but the consumers should not be ripped off. Media is about the number of views, not the quality of their bank accounts.
I really hope steemit follows this route, and hey, if you could credit me for the idea, that would be great too.
Check out more about smallism at smallism.org
More info about Patreon and Laura Southern here
