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Hiding in plain sight: The YouTubers' crowdfunding piracy
I never imagined I would be watching Kitchen Nightmares, starring the world-renowned chef Gordon Ramsay, in my downtime on YouTube. I knew of Ramsay and his ruthlessness from shows like Hell's Kitchen, but I had never heard of Kitchen Nightmares until a few weeks ago, when an episode popped up on YouTube's Trending section. Next thing you know, I'm hooked and watching full episodes of it on my phone instead of the usual sneaker videos. But aside from Ramsay's rants at owners of filthy restaurants, something else caught my attention -- these uploads weren't from Fox, which owns the rights to the show in the US. Instead, they were from an unofficial channel called "Kitchen Nightmares Hotel Hell and Hell's Kitchen." And as if that wasn't brazen enough, the owner explicitly asked viewers for donations to fund the uploading of copyrighted content.
The internet war on sex is here
During the Great Internet Sex War, that began in the United States during its Facebook Era, people were forced to stockpile their porn. Lube was bought by the drum and hidden in bunkers, alongside vibrators and air-gapped computers holding valuable troves of accurate, non judgemental sex information. Gimp suits were stored upright, oiled, and ready for doomsday's call. Explicit gifs became a black market commodity, and there were rumors of a Thunderdome ruled by cam girls. Every sexual identity, except the singular one deemed safe by the corporations, went into hiding. Fear prevented even the mere mention of sexual pleasure on the networks and in communications.
Kickstarter hands Drip crowdfunding platform over to XOXO founders
Drip, Kickstarter's subscriber-based crowdfunding platform designed to compete with Patreon, is shutting down in its current form after launching just one year earlier. It will continue operating for a year before it is transformed into an entirely new project headed up by the team behind XOXO, a festival for independent artists and creators.
Reddit and Patreon team up to help creators foster community
Reddit and Patreon are teaming up to help creators grow their communities and give their fans more ways to support them. Patreon creators will be able to connect their page to their subreddits. Once the two are integrated, creators can include Patreon widgets on their subreddits to encourage fans to venture to that site, presumably in the hope that will lead more people to support their work with subscriptions.
Why PayPal’s crackdown on ASMR creators should worry you
In June, China banned and excised videos of sound effects while claiming to cleanse its internet of pornography. YouTube had already demonetized the genre in a sex panic; now PayPal is banning people for life and holding individuals' funds, ignorant of the facts and marching lockstep to the tune of 8chan trolls enacting a campaign to punish "whores." The most bitter punchline in all this? A tiny percentage of the entire video genre is even remotely sexual, and those suffering — female creators — aren't even making sex content.
Anchor's donation option lets podcast fans support their favorite shows
Anchor, the audio broadcast-turned-podcasting platform, has launched a new Listener Support feature that lets podcasters collect money from their fans for their efforts. Creators of any size or experience level can add a Listener Support button to their public Anchor profile, which followers can click to make a regular monthly donation of $0.99, $4.99 or $9.99. Adding the button also puts a link in the podcast notes on every app or website where it's available, so listeners can support their favorite shows from anywhere.
Patreon’s pornapocalypse is back on
Patreon has begun a fresh crackdown on users who make and sell adult-related content services on its crowdsourced patronage platform. The company has begun to suspend and report users who use the site to sell suggestive material, including Vex Ashley, creator of Four Chambers. According to Motherboard, users have been told that the reason for their suspension is "implied nudity."
YouTube looks to merch and memberships to make creators more money
YouTube is having a busy day at VidCon 2018. Aside from launching Premieres, a feature that lets creators hype prerecorded videos with a public landing page, the company is also announcing new ways for them to make more money. For starters, channels with more than 100,000 subscribers will now have access to Memberships, which will allow viewers to pay a monthly fee of $4.99 to get exclusive access to badges, emoji, livestreams, members-only videos and shoutouts, among other perks. This is exactly what YouTube was already doing with Sponsorships, though that was available only to a select group of YouTubers. If you're a creator but don't meet the 100,000-subscriber threshold, YouTube says it hopes to bring Channel Memberships to more people in the coming months.
Patreon promises a simple solution for selling merch
If you've ever supported a Patreon campaign with merch on offer, you know how painful delivering that merch can be for everyone involved. The creator may have to suffer through hours of mailing goods, and the shipping costs can be as much of a hassle if you aren't willing to pay a stiff premium. Patreon might just tackle that problem. It just acquired the community-building company Kit, and the two are promising a "simple" solution that lets creators sell merch without doing most of the hard work. In theory, they don't have to do much more than design the products.
Patreon lets creators share progress through Snapchat-like stories
Even Patreon is getting into the trend of cloning Snapchat. The funding service is introducing a mobile Lens feature that lets creators produce Snapchat-like stories that disappear after 24 hours, giving backers a behind-the-scenes look at a project without the hassle of shooting a formal video. And unlike Snapchat (or Instagram, or...), you can limit posts just to backers without having to create a special account, share private links or otherwise jump through hoops.
Patreon nixes controversial fee increase amid backlash
Patreon CEO Jack Conte announced today that the modern-day patronage system will not be implementing the controversial fee changes that it announced last week. While the service will still work to fix the issues it was trying to correct with the addition of new service fees, it will do so with creator input in the future.
Patreon’s fee change punishes supporters who make small pledges
This week, the popular patronage system Patreon made an announcement that has shaken its user base to the core: It's implementing a fee change that will gut the current pledge system and is already devastating people who rely on it to support their creative endeavors.
Patreon is shifting processing fees from creators to supporters
On December 18th, Patreon will be changing how it handles service fees. Currently, Patreon takes five percent of whatever creators make on the site but because of various processing fees that also apply, creators actually lose seven to 15 percent of their earnings. So now, Patreon says it wants to streamline those fees and on the 18th it will charge patrons a new service fee of 2.9 percent plus 35 cents per pledge. That means creators will now only see a flat five percent taken from their pledges. However, while the funding platform is presenting this change as a benefit for creators, many are concerned that these new charges will cause a good portion of their patrons to stop pledging.
Kickstarter's Drip takes on Patreon with subscription crowdfunding
Today, Kickstarter launches a new way to fund interesting projects. It's called Drip and rather than pledging a certain amount of money to one project, it lets you subscribe to a creator and give them monthly payments. Drip was a standalone subscription platform, but Kickstarter bought it last year just as it was set to shutdown. It has now been retooled by Kickstarter and though it's largely similar to other subscription crowdfunding sites, such as Patreon, Drip does have a couple of features that set it apart from the rest.
The real consequences of Patreon's adult content crackdown
NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts. On October 17th, crowdfunding website Patreon amended the terms of its acceptable use policy as part of a wider program of reform. The new document was now much more proscriptive about what the site's users could and could not use its payments platform for. Beyond tightening provisions around hate speech and illegal content, the site essentially banned sex workers and adult content of a sexual nature. Patreon had always described itself as "not for pornography" but offered a broad latitude for projects that contained erotic content, and the change has caused much upset in the community that produces such material.
New Patreon tools help creators connect with backers
Running a Patreon page doesn't only entail creating for your audience: if you amass a lot of patrons, you'll also have to deal potentially time-consuming admin tasks. To make it easier to run a membership business, Patreon has introduced new tools called App Directory and Developer Portal. App Directory makes it easy to connect a variety of useful services to your Patreon page. For instance, if you have a WordPress-powered website, you can tie it up with your Patreon account in order to create patron-only posts.
Patreon moves to restrict adult content on its crowdfunding site
NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts. Patreon is a crowdfunding platform that enables people to receive subscription payments for the work that they do. It's a way of connecting individuals and small businesses with paying audiences, from news websites and YouTube channels through to activists and educators.
YouTube is cracking down on external links in videos
YouTube has sent some creators into a panic when it blocked their ability to link out to external sites in their end cards. A lot of people use those cards to link to merchandise they sell and to Patreon pages where fans can pledge a set amount per month to support their projects. The video streaming platform didn't intend to block Patreon or any other URL in particular, though: turns out it simply made the feature exclusively available to members of the YouTube Partner Program.
Medium's subscription offers all-you-can-read stories for $5
We knew that subscriptions were coming to the popular blogging platform, Medium. But, we didn't know the full details of what'd be included or the price. For $5 a month you'll get access to exclusive pieces of writing, site features before anyone else sees them, an offline reading list and ad-free browsing.
'Uncharted' borrows from cinema to sidestep clunky game design
Developer Naughty Dog's games have always had a flair for the cinematic and that's due in large part to their presentation. The studio takes a minimalistic approach to how it delivers information to the player, eschewing ugly on-screen means of directing you where to go by using filmic techniques like smart scene composition and color to subtly guide the players from one area to the next. In the video below, YouTuber Mark Brown explores Uncharted 3's opening, breaking down how Naughty Dog pretty masterfully keeps players on the right track during the rooftop chase sequence without it feeling claustrophobically linear.
