I'm writing this to inform everyone that I'll be deleting my Patreon account after the New Year. I want a platform that is explicitly free speech, which Patreon has said and has demonstrated that it is not.
Another reason why I believe the Steem platform will have a bright future. There has to be a way for creators to protect their work from the whims and feelings of moral busy bodies who think they know best for everyone.
Patreon bills itself as a creator platform, but I've come to realize that it is just a middleman, taking an extra fee on top of PayPal's for doing nothing particularly special. It's a middle man like Twitter and Facebook are merely middlemen for conversations and family photo albums. Middlemen have inserted themselves in between each other. Somehow, they to decide who says what to whom and how much is allowed to be said.
As far as I'm concerned, that is unacceptable.
It has revealed itself to be a platform that seeks to curate artists that fit a particular mold instead of allowing artists to define themselves in direct relation to their patrons. It is not the job of Patreon to protect patrons or the public from artist and commentator ideas or to "reform" them of their bad behavior.
Furthermore, their amorphous rules contained - and not contained - within their Terms of Service, makes maintaining a business that is dependent on their platform far too unreliable to trust long into the future.
For those reasons, I'll be seeking alternative methods of funding my filmmaking.
Please consider supporting me directly via PayPal using this link. For, $1 a month, you'll get everything you were getting here including a private Telegram channel where you'll have access to me... whenever!
Anything else I post to Patreon before the New Year will be without charge.
Thank you for your understanding.
-Phil
