Sam Harris closes his Patreon account following a slew of deplatformings

[Vini 430]

 

 

14th biggest patron on the site

 

 

Edited December 17, 2018 by Vini

[TLHBO 2,160]

The left are trying to shur down antone who disagrees with them.

 

Your acerage lefty tool thinks its a good thing. They don't realize how dangerous this is and how it could be turned on them at any minute.

Edited December 17, 2018 by TLHBO

[Truno2018 53]

17 minutes ago, TLHBO said:

The left are trying to shur down antone who disagrees with them.

 

Your acerage lefty tool thinks its a good thing. They don't realize how dangerous this is and how it could be turned on them at any minute.

Right wing spelling has gone down the toilet.   

[bhytre 2,753]

[Voidler 1,675]

[Truno2018 53]

Right wingers jealous that we can shur down antone and they can’t. 

[Cooke 2,026]

2 hours ago, Truno2018 said:

Right wingers jealous that we can shur down antone and they can’t. 

I could delete you if I behaved liked a left wing Stalinist. 

[McWicked 825]

2 hours ago, Cookester15 said:

I could delete you if I behaved liked a left wing Stalinist. 

Or like a right-wing white nationalist:

 

 

This is a non-topic.  Patreon didn't deplatform Sam Harris.  Sam Harris quit.  Milo got deplatformed for being a neo-nazi.  Alex Jones got deplatformed for saying the Sandy Hook shooting was faked.  Gavin McInnes got deplatformed for advocating violence in the streets.  But Sam just plain quit.

Seems pretty obvi to me: if you want to participate in the services of private entities, just don't be a dick, or don't quit using the service.  

[Vini 430]

This made me subscribe to Sam for $7 a month.

 

 

[jehurey 3,227]

9 minutes ago, Vini said:

This made me subscribe to Sam for $7 a month.

 

 

So the publicity stunt worked to direct more people to sign up for subscriptions.

 

Its amazing how he had the payment subscription service already set up at his own website when he made that announcement.

 

And its such an attention-grabbing announcement, you are literally here distributing his message for him.

[Vini 430]

I will always distribute Sam's work he's one of the most principled people I know. 

[Hot Sauce 2,727]

20 minutes ago, jehurey said:

Its amazing how he had the payment subscription service already set up at his own website when he made that announcement.

The subscription service on his website predates his usage of Patreon.

[jehurey 3,227]

1 minute ago, Hot Sauce said:

The subscription service on his website predates his usage of Patreon.

So.......my comment still applies?Would he have left Patreon if he didn't have any other payment acceptance method?

Edited December 17, 2018 by jehurey

[jehurey 3,227]

15 minutes ago, Vini said:

I will always distribute Sam's work he's one of the most principled people I know. 

Of course you will. You're a stooge.

[Cooke 2,026]

1 hour ago, McWickedSmawt85 said:

Or like a right-wing white nationalist:

 

 

This is a non-topic.  Patreon didn't deplatform Sam Harris.  Sam Harris quit.  Milo got deplatformed for being a neo-nazi.  Alex Jones got deplatformed for saying the Sandy Hook shooting was faked.  Gavin McInnes got deplatformed for advocating violence in the streets.  But Sam just plain quit.

Seems pretty obvi to me: if you want to participate in the services of private entities, just don't be a dick, or don't quit using the service.  

This is more about Sarkon being deplatformed, actual racist scum shouldn't have a place. But Sarkon is definitely not a racist. 

[Vini 430]

Just now, Cookester15 said:

This is more about Sarkon being deplatformed, actual racist scum shouldn't have a place. But Sarkon is definitely not a racist. 

 

But he's "problematic"

 

 

[Hot Sauce 2,727]

19 minutes ago, jehurey said:

So.......my comment still applies?

I read it as you implying it was some new thing that he put up prior to making the announcement.

 

24 minutes ago, jehurey said:

Would he have left Patreon if he didn't have any other payment acceptance method?

Does it matter? It sort of stops being a publicity stunt when it has a negative impact on your bottom line which leaving Patreon absolutely will. You can still write it off as virtue signalling and say it's an acceptable loss in the pursuit of moral superiority, but at that point you should really stop and reconsider whether you're being objective in your reasoning.

[jehurey 3,227]

4 minutes ago, Hot Sauce said:

I read it as you implying it was some new thing that he put up prior to making the announcement.

 

Does it matter? It sort of stops being a publicity stunt when it has a negative impact on your bottom line which leaving Patreon absolutely will. You can still write it off as virtue signalling and say it's an acceptable loss in the pursuit of moral superiority, but at that point you should really stop and reconsider whether you're being objective in your reasoning.

So.........my comment still applies no matter HOW you would interpret it?

 

And yes it does matter. He doesn't perform his publicity stunt if he were really sacrificing something. This is marketing, and the attention and new subscriptions gained from this was probably worth it to him.

 

Podcasting revenue isn't his only revenue stream. He's a public speaker, he's a writer who sells books.

 

I suppose I should be asking you: DID YOU consider giving this enough thought when reading my post?

Edited December 17, 2018 by jehurey

[McWicked 825]

1 hour ago, Cookester15 said:

Sarkon is definitely not a racist. 

 

Except for that one time he said “You are acting like a bunch of n******, just so you know. You act like white n******,”:

 

 

Or that other time he argued racism was good for black people:

 

 

Like I said: don't be a dick and/or don't quit the platform.  

[Hot Sauce 2,727]

4 minutes ago, jehurey said:

So.........my comment still applies no matter HOW you would interpret it?

Yes. The crux of your argument is that it's a publicity stunt. I was just pointing out that the subscription offering isn't new.

 

8 minutes ago, jehurey said:

And yes it does matter. He doesn't perform his publicity stunt if he were really sacrificing something. This is marketing, and the attention and new subscriptions gained from this was probably worth it to him.

Leaving Patreon is absolutely a sacrifice.

 

An average person would see a pretty significant cut in revenue by switching from Patreon to a self-hosted setup even if they kept every single patron because of transaction consolidation and hosting/maintaining/securing a site to host a payment processing API.

 

Harris already has the website, so it's largely a fixed cost on the hosting/maintaining/securing side and he's really only losing the transaction consolidation. Net is probably in the 4% range for each patron that converts for Harris. The question becomes, does a 4% gain offset the loss of using Patreon as a platform for advertising? Well, he's had the payment options on his site even before he used Patreon and he's still ended up with the 14th most patrons on Patreon. Expecting 96% of them to switch over is pretty absurd.

 

46 minutes ago, jehurey said:

Podcasting revenue isn't his only revenue stream. 

Podcasting revenue isn't his only revenue stream and Patreon isn't even the only platform for that podcasting revenue stream. I would guess it's a pretty significant cut of it, though. He's estimated at $44k per podcast through Patreon and does 2-4 a month, or ~$1.5 million/year even after fees.

 

1 hour ago, jehurey said:

he's a writer who sells books.

He hasn't written a book in a few years and I doubt they sold well enough to compare. His most successful book reportedly sold 250k copies. It has a list price of $16.95 so we'll just say every copy was sold at that price and give him well above industry standard royalty of 20% and you get $850,000. Bit over half of his annual Patreon take.

 

1 hour ago, jehurey said:

He's a public speaker

And a really busy one at that. I wouldn't know where to begin to ballpark what he makes yearly on public speaking gigs.

 

1 hour ago, jehurey said:

I suppose I should be asking you: DID YOU consider giving this enough thought when reading my post?

Cheeky.

 

I don't think his other revenue streams make the loss of Patreon insignificant and I don't see them increasing enough as a result of the "publicity stunt" to offset the $1.5 million he's giving up by shuttering his Patreon account. Suggesting that is pretty ridiculous and I just can't see you saying that if the circumstances were different and it was somebody you agree with more often.