Jack Conte | SXSW 2024 Keynote
April 13, 2024 3:09 PM Subscribe
Death of the Follower & the Future of Creativity on the Web [46m] "Patreon CEO Jack Conte explains how the current internet algorithms are killing the traditional "follower" for creators, threatening their creative freedom and livelihoods."
"The internet started as a platform that democratized creative distribution. You could upload your work to platforms like YouTube and immediately have it accessible to millions of people. After that came the "subscribe" button, which enabled creators to go beyond reach. Now they could build a following and find their true fans that would support them to build a creative business. But with the rise of platform-focused algorithms (Facebook's ranking, TikTok's "for you" curation), creators cannot reach their following and true fans. This shift has had a devastating impact on creators' creativity and ability to support themselves doing what they love. He advocates for the new spaces on the internet (like Patreon) where creators can always connect with their communities, create what they want, and control their own destinies."
"The internet started as a platform that democratized creative distribution. You could upload your work to platforms like YouTube and immediately have it accessible to millions of people. After that came the "subscribe" button, which enabled creators to go beyond reach. Now they could build a following and find their true fans that would support them to build a creative business. But with the rise of platform-focused algorithms (Facebook's ranking, TikTok's "for you" curation), creators cannot reach their following and true fans. This shift has had a devastating impact on creators' creativity and ability to support themselves doing what they love. He advocates for the new spaces on the internet (like Patreon) where creators can always connect with their communities, create what they want, and control their own destinies."
Yeah well I got like five thousand actual followers on my various platforms and I'm lucky to make a sale a month, down from pretty good business three years ago. People aren't interested in my product any more I guess? Except I keep getting new followers who love it. Jack, explain how opening yet another platform "with followers" is going to help make sales.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:37 PM on April 13 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:37 PM on April 13 [1 favorite]
It should be noted that, before Jack Conte started Patreon, he was better known as one half of the band Pomplamoose, which made it big on YouTube around 2008, and still posts music there pretty much constantly. In other words - he seems to have come to this as a working artist trying to solve a problem he and his band were experiencing. In a world of ignorant techbros, I guess that is worth something.
posted by ourobouros at 5:36 PM on April 13 [17 favorites]
posted by ourobouros at 5:36 PM on April 13 [17 favorites]
Jack, explain how opening yet another platform "with followers" is going to help make sales.
I would think the point is that current platforms' algorithms stop your followers from engaging with you as much; Facebook etc. are driving people to engage with an overwhelming amount of material, so even people who "follow" you might rarely see your content or will have their attention diluted by things they only like one half or one tenth as much, but which are getting pushed at them anyway and drowning you out.
It's part of why I stopped Meetup organizing; once they got bought out, they changed things to send a firehose of event listings to users, diluting any sort of loyalty to specific groups.
posted by mistersix at 5:42 PM on April 13 [3 favorites]
I would think the point is that current platforms' algorithms stop your followers from engaging with you as much; Facebook etc. are driving people to engage with an overwhelming amount of material, so even people who "follow" you might rarely see your content or will have their attention diluted by things they only like one half or one tenth as much, but which are getting pushed at them anyway and drowning you out.
It's part of why I stopped Meetup organizing; once they got bought out, they changed things to send a firehose of event listings to users, diluting any sort of loyalty to specific groups.
posted by mistersix at 5:42 PM on April 13 [3 favorites]
For my own socials, Im talking about tumblr, mastodon and lately bluesky, none of which primarily use algorithmic feeds. I get a lot of engagement, but sales have tanked.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:36 PM on April 13 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:36 PM on April 13 [1 favorite]
even people who "follow" you might rarely see your content or will have their attention diluted by things they only like one half or one tenth as much, but which are getting pushed at them anyway and drowning you out.
Facebook literally doesn't even show my friends of fifteen years my feed when I post things that are important to me on them, when they might also be accompanied by a link or something that takes people off of Facebook. I posted a statement about my friend's suicide, along with a link to a GoFundMe, and that shit got algorithmically *disappeared*. Meanwhile my complaining about politics is visible to people I tangentially interacted with once three years ago. I can only imagine what it's like for content creators trying to actually make money on pages, but who aren't paying Facebook directly for the privilege.
posted by corb at 7:04 PM on April 13 [14 favorites]
Facebook literally doesn't even show my friends of fifteen years my feed when I post things that are important to me on them, when they might also be accompanied by a link or something that takes people off of Facebook. I posted a statement about my friend's suicide, along with a link to a GoFundMe, and that shit got algorithmically *disappeared*. Meanwhile my complaining about politics is visible to people I tangentially interacted with once three years ago. I can only imagine what it's like for content creators trying to actually make money on pages, but who aren't paying Facebook directly for the privilege.
posted by corb at 7:04 PM on April 13 [14 favorites]
Conte is a terrific and inspiring speaker. I was there for his intro to Patreon talk at XOXO many years ago and was absolutely sold on the idea. "My favorite creators are going to LOVE this!" I thought.
And I was right... for a while. Oh Joy Sex Toy was one of my first subscriptions. I was thrilled to be able to lob "buying somebody a beer" money at someone on a regular basis for them to just keep doing what they're doing. Eventually I found more creators; many aligned with adult content, but plenty of safe-for-work art, journalistic and educational creators as well.
But it wasn't perfect. I remember my creators being upset by several strange structure changes to how subscriptions worked along with the frequency and target audience for created content. The simple connection of "artist wants to make stuff" to "fan who wants to give artist money for the stuff they make" had a confusing, shifting payment/subscription model rammed into the middle that seemed to be frustrating my creators.
There's also a fatigue that I'm sensing. If I recall, the original promise of Patreon was to make it easy to set up a tip jar for "true fans" expressly to not waste time on creating CDs and merch and shipping things and free up the creator to spend more time creating and publishing. But over time, what I saw again and again was artists who seemed to be spending bizarre amounts of time polling their users about their interests, or creating complex tiers and reward structures (followed by the requite apologies, post-silence, restructure or hiatus announcement). It seemed like unhealthy behavior; as though some optimization specialist was whispering tips in their ears on how to maximize their Patreon cash flow. It felt a bit gross from the outside.
And as much as Jack laments the loss of the simple subscription model, the Patreon app itself changed its end user feed to group together recent posts from creators, which has made a mess of being able to follow all the content from all of my creators. Frequent posters have their content buried and rare posters have their older works shown to me again and again.
As far as depth of community and the fire of fandom; my creators have all that, just elsewhere on Discord instances. The internal chat and community infrastructure offered by Patreon natively seems... very text-message like, which would seem to have rather low levels of max participants before it becomes unusable. Any more than 25 people would call for a rich chat service (Element, Discord, Slack, Zulip, etc).
And I would be thrilled if Patreon universally supported the OG subscription model (RSS feeds) for all content, not just podcasts.
posted by neuracnu at 10:56 PM on April 13 [6 favorites]
And I was right... for a while. Oh Joy Sex Toy was one of my first subscriptions. I was thrilled to be able to lob "buying somebody a beer" money at someone on a regular basis for them to just keep doing what they're doing. Eventually I found more creators; many aligned with adult content, but plenty of safe-for-work art, journalistic and educational creators as well.
But it wasn't perfect. I remember my creators being upset by several strange structure changes to how subscriptions worked along with the frequency and target audience for created content. The simple connection of "artist wants to make stuff" to "fan who wants to give artist money for the stuff they make" had a confusing, shifting payment/subscription model rammed into the middle that seemed to be frustrating my creators.
There's also a fatigue that I'm sensing. If I recall, the original promise of Patreon was to make it easy to set up a tip jar for "true fans" expressly to not waste time on creating CDs and merch and shipping things and free up the creator to spend more time creating and publishing. But over time, what I saw again and again was artists who seemed to be spending bizarre amounts of time polling their users about their interests, or creating complex tiers and reward structures (followed by the requite apologies, post-silence, restructure or hiatus announcement). It seemed like unhealthy behavior; as though some optimization specialist was whispering tips in their ears on how to maximize their Patreon cash flow. It felt a bit gross from the outside.
And as much as Jack laments the loss of the simple subscription model, the Patreon app itself changed its end user feed to group together recent posts from creators, which has made a mess of being able to follow all the content from all of my creators. Frequent posters have their content buried and rare posters have their older works shown to me again and again.
As far as depth of community and the fire of fandom; my creators have all that, just elsewhere on Discord instances. The internal chat and community infrastructure offered by Patreon natively seems... very text-message like, which would seem to have rather low levels of max participants before it becomes unusable. Any more than 25 people would call for a rich chat service (Element, Discord, Slack, Zulip, etc).
And I would be thrilled if Patreon universally supported the OG subscription model (RSS feeds) for all content, not just podcasts.
posted by neuracnu at 10:56 PM on April 13 [6 favorites]
I want Patreon to be successful, and maybe someday get to that micropayment thing that is the flying-car of the century.
I only use it for podcasts, I want that model to work. But I have had the paid rss feeds fail often. Sometimes but not always correlated, and only ever on patreon, they will cease to issue monthly payments. Payment vendor doesn’t seem to matter. The bank would have no record of failures. This does not happen across the board, as if it really was an account issue. Some podcasts would get paid and others wouldn’t.
I don’t know if any of that is Patreon’s fault, but I do not like their app at all and do not understand how it can be so bad. I can’t keep audio when I pivot apps, which is a feature I would consider bog standard at this point.
posted by drowsy at 2:22 PM on April 14 [1 favorite]
I only use it for podcasts, I want that model to work. But I have had the paid rss feeds fail often. Sometimes but not always correlated, and only ever on patreon, they will cease to issue monthly payments. Payment vendor doesn’t seem to matter. The bank would have no record of failures. This does not happen across the board, as if it really was an account issue. Some podcasts would get paid and others wouldn’t.
I don’t know if any of that is Patreon’s fault, but I do not like their app at all and do not understand how it can be so bad. I can’t keep audio when I pivot apps, which is a feature I would consider bog standard at this point.
posted by drowsy at 2:22 PM on April 14 [1 favorite]
I feel like I read or watched something about how the problem with Patreon is all the VC funding it has received, but I can't seem to find it now. The gist was that the VC funding perverted the platform from its original goal of helping fans give money to creators, and shifted the goal to providing return on investment for the venture capitalists at the expense of the fans and creators, and this explains basically everything anyone ever hated about Patreon, Jack Conte's good intentions notwithstanding.
posted by surlyben at 5:01 PM on April 14 [2 favorites]
posted by surlyben at 5:01 PM on April 14 [2 favorites]
I have a Patreon and I'm pretty happy with it. It's pretty simple: a) people can give me money, and b) they go to my page and see what I've put there, rather than an Algorithm.
Good things in tech rarely last, so maybe it'll get enshittified later on. But if Conte really hates the Algorithm, that's a good sign.
posted by zompist at 12:42 AM on April 15 [1 favorite]
Good things in tech rarely last, so maybe it'll get enshittified later on. But if Conte really hates the Algorithm, that's a good sign.
posted by zompist at 12:42 AM on April 15 [1 favorite]
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