well Dave and I are here today to talk
about patreon and so I'll start we've
been engaged in lengthy series of email
exchanges with all of the people in our
network and no one is happy at all with
what's been happening and so we've been
determining what our options are and we
looked at subscribe star but it looks
like PayPal decided to cut funding out
from them and so it doesn't look like
moving to an alternative provider an
alternative commercial provider that's
out of our bailiwick out of our control
is going to be viable so Dave why don't
you describe what we talked about today
yeah well first I think we should just
make it very clear for everybody
how significant what happened to Carl
Benjamin sargon of akkad is it doesn't
matter what you think of him or whether
you agree with him or any of that stuff
the banning of him for doing something
that was not on the patreon platform
that wasn't even done on his channel
because of a word he said where he was
using the word against the alt-right or
the neo-nazis or whatever you want to
call them he's a massive move of that
line of what's acceptable now there's
all sorts of debates we can have and
we've had them of what lines should be
if there should be lines at all but the
fact that this guy got booted with no
chance of recourse with no warning just
just like that it's just an extension of
everything else that we've all been
talking also and also given that it's
also the case that he didn't break
patrons rules of engagement the ones
that they stated and that conte had
talked to you about the fact that that
wasn't going to happen and that patreon
hasn't responded well to this well look
look he jack conte came into my studio
in my home and said he said a phrase
that I had never heard before maybe you
had heard it before manifest observable
behavior so you had never even heard
that phrase before right I thought I
thought maybe this was just something
that went past me okay
now of course manifest observable
behavior mo be mob you can't I mean
that's it there's a there's a really but
but so the point was that it had to be
about behavior and then in their Terms
of Service it also had to be about
what was happening on platforms so at
every firewall here of what would have
been acceptable patreon failed and
they've put us in a position where look
I told I called you last Saturday and
when this was really catching fire and I
said you know patreon is about 65 to 70%
of my Reb that's I have a company now
with with employees you know full timers
part-timers I was actually considering
deleting it right then and there no one
in their right mind would do no business
person would do and I've taken big risks
in the past you know before I was on
patreon we were at or at EBI me and my
producer in my record we all quit our
jobs lost our health insurance all of it
to join patreon so I'm not I like taking
risks but then I realized alright we
have to figure out a plan and that's
exactly why we're doing this right yeah
well and we would have moved faster but
we well and I did set up as subscribes
to our account although I never quite
finished setting it up partly because
subscribe stars seemed to fall apart
almost immediately under attack and and
also it wasn't obvious that I also read
their Terms of agreement and it wasn't
obvious that we weren't going to be just
in exactly the same situation again and
there's only so many mistakes you can
make before the mistakes start to become
fatal so we wanted to come up with a
serious and and and and stable solution
and I've been working on for months
literally for months it's been six
months I've been working on a system to
allow authors and other people who
engage publicly on intellectual issues
to interact more effectively with their
readers and viewers and listeners and it
occurred to me this week that with a bit
of modification that that can serve
exactly the function that we're hoping
it would serve so what we're going to
try to do as fast as we possibly can is
to set the system up on a subscriber
model that's analogous to patreon it'll
have a bunch of additional features
which I don't want to talk about right
now and I don't want to over promise but
the system is is because the system is
new but we're gonna try to get that
rolled out as fast as we possibly can so
and we have a number of people who are
interested in hypothetically interested
in moving their their subscription
service over
to it Dave and I are very seriously
planning to do this as soon as we can do
it in an intelligent way and so yeah and
you you know by the way one of the
interesting things here we haven't
talked about this but I'm guessing your
experience is just like mine the amount
of emails that I have received and of
course tweets and everything else but
mostly emails from developers from
investors from regular people from
engineers I mean just anyone going this
is the one because you know the issue
with all of these free speech things is
it's like you don't want to swing too
early before you realize that the
problems gotten to critical mass ask but
then most likely you're gonna swing too
late the lines will have so far that we
may be on the outside of them and that's
why this one I think was so interesting
because Carl you know years ago five or
six years ago when I started waking up
to what was going on with the left
obviously and all of the free speech
stuff everyone said you've got to talk
to sargon of akkad
he's a guy so this is the guy that's
been ahead of all of this sargon ii was
like he was big he was very helpful to
me when I was first under attack you
know and he's a brave guy and and so and
it's a real mistake what patron has done
to him and and as I said everybody in
our network is extremely upset about it
like we've been sending e-mails back and
forth well probably with 30 or 40 people
and so as Dave said earlier we wanted to
make this video today to let everybody
that we're communicating with know that
we have not been sleeping on this front
man people are trying to figure out what
to do so this stops happening and and so
and we have a good plan and and we're
gonna try to implement it as as soon as
possible so I would ask everybody who's
listening to be you know reasonably
patient imagine that this will take
somewhere between a week and a month to
sort out properly all we're going to try
to get something up in the next week
hopefully before Christmas if we can't
manage that you know because when you
implement something like this there are
technical complications that might
emerge that you don't foresee but I
don't want people to get the impression
that we're taking this lightly or lying
down and that we're not looking for a
permanent alternative because we are and
I think we can come up with a better
alternative
and that's the plan yeah that that's
exactly what I would say I would just
add that it was like we were waiting for
a moment you know we've watched these
doors slowly closing on it all of us
whether it's Twitter whether it's
Facebook who's getting banned who's
getting shadow banned payment processing
everything else and we are taking this
as seriously as possible of course you
know Jordan who's working harder than
anyone on the face of the planet somehow
you managed to also partly build a
platform over the course of the past
year in the middle of all I knew that
this we knew that this was lurking in
the background and that this was going
to be a problem and Dave you've spent
lots of time talking to investors and
developers about building alternatives
to these platforms that seem to be
willing to throw their weight around in
an increasingly arbitrary manner but
it's not like it's a simple thing to do
people want somebody to say enough is
enough and I I mentioned this in a live
stream I did the other day but you know
I've watched my patreon dropped we've
lost around 600 patrons I think about
5,000 bucks a month but in a weird way
I've actually been inspired by it
because I'm watching yeah I agree for
themselves so it's like on one hand
people are emailing me and they're
saying I'm dropping my patronage and I'm
really pissed and it's not about you and
I want to support you and on the other
hand my business side is going that's
not great but you know but we will solve
this thing I I've lost a thousand
subscribers and I feel exactly the same
way it's like well they're telling
patreon to go to hell and you know it's
it's not so good for me on the financial
front although that's not too big a
catastrophe at the moment they're
they're taking the right stand and and
encouraging us let's say or encouraging
someone to do something about this so
anyway ah that's what I like I like what
you said if we can just ask you guys to
be reasonably patient we're talking to
everybody that you can think of and some
people that you can't think of we're
gonna fix this we're gonna yeah well
we're gonna or at least we're going to
do our best to fix it there's gonna be
some bumps along the way man because
we're now we have to speed this process
up too so we'll have to consider this a
beta version but at minimum we hope to
provide an easy way of switching to a
new subscription service within the next
very short while so and thank you
everyone for your content
patience and your continued support and
your attention and your thoughts and
your reaction to all of this and and
it's it's very much appreciated and it
does help us I would say maintain
motivation to continue doing this
constantly you know the fact that I have
all these patreon subscribers certainly
is one of the reasons that I try to put
my youtube channel
I wouldn't say first and foremost
because it's had to take a backseat to
this lecture tour but man its way to
hell up there on my priority list
absolutely and it gives us all sorts of
flexibility to do all sorts of things it
gave me a little bit of flexibility to
join you on this tour so I'm incredibly
humbled and appreciative of everybody
that does that Jordan I will I will see
it in a couple days in West Palm Beach
please ladies stake I will take you out
first
good good good well I found a good steak
place here so I'm looking forward to
seeing you Dave and Ewing the two array
because we're gonna continue the tour in
in California yeah great three venues in
California and January and then the two
in Australia New Zealand we're gonna add
additional dates and hopefully Seoul and
Singapore
maybe the Philippines we've got all
sorts of additional things planned we
doing anything on the moon well not so
far but but I have some connections to
you long bus okay man I'll talk to you
soon we'll get this up right away
great okay bye bye