> I think Jack at Patreon fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the relationship between patron and creator. A lot of patrons feel like their payment is a donation instead of a subscription or water bill. Yes, some patrons+creators have a quid-pro-quo arrangement where payments unlocks content or extra services. However, many payments are just "appreciation" type of money.
And at least for serials the "quid-pro-quo" arrangement is usually earlier access to content (e.g. bonus/patron chapters), there's no exclusive/sale type arrangement.
>And at least for serials the "quid-pro-quo" arrangement is usually earlier access to content
Yes, when I typed out "quid-pro-quo", I was thinking back to the recent HN article about webcam women making money on Patreon. Patrons would pay $10 a month and for that, the women would do private chats, role play, etc. For that particular type of patron who needs to see a particular woman take her clothes off, the 2.9% fee plus 35 cents would be more of a "nuisance" fee and they'd just go ahead and pay it. Let's call this group, the SUBSCRIBERS.
However, a lot of Patreon relationships are not quid-pro-quo and it's a totally different psychology when patrons pay a $1 donation to "support an artist" with no direct benefit other than some good feelings or minor things like "early access to content" like you pointed out. In this scenario, Patreon is the online version of throwing money into a hat to show appreciation for the musician at a coffee shop. Inflicting extra fees on patrons damages this type of relationship. (E.g. "Twitter was filled with screenshots of people removing their $1 pledges.") Let's call this tip jar group, the DONATORS.
If SUBSCRIBERS are the majority and dominated the platform over the DONATORS, Patreon could have stayed the course to charge extra fees to patrons on December 18.
However, it's telling that Patreon aborted that plan which signals to me that the DONATORS are a very large and influential part of the Patreon membership. Jack said they did a bunch of spreadsheet models and surveys before announcing the fee changes but obviously, their assumptions about their members were way off somewhere.
(I'm oversimplifying with categories of SUBSCRIBERS vs DONATORS to illustrate a point. It's certainly possible for some patrons to be a blend of both psychologies based on how their pledges are split to various creators.)
And at least for serials the "quid-pro-quo" arrangement is usually earlier access to content (e.g. bonus/patron chapters), there's no exclusive/sale type arrangement.